Accelerated (20 page)

Walt downed the rest of his beer and opened his wallet. “I should head back. I’ve got a brief to write tonight.”

“Here, let me.” Sean reached for his back pocket.

Walt shooed it away. “My treat. You’ll get me next time.”

O
N THE SUBWAY RIDE UPTOWN, HE WONDERED IF WHAT
W
ALT
had said was true. Jess would be interested to hear his theory. Soon, though, all he could think about was Jess’s legs wrapped around his waist and the way her body responded to his. And then, ultimately, he had to think about Jess walking out the door near tears. He hated the fact that he couldn’t even email her. Then he realized that was ridiculous. Of course he could email her.

As soon as Sean got home, he sat down at the computer. All he had was her school account. It would have to do.
Dear Jess
. Dear was too formal.
Jess
, he wrote. Then he stared at the computer. What did he want to say? That he couldn’t stop thinking about her? That he needed to see her? Way too desperate.

Jess
, he wrote.
Hope you’re having a great break. Looking forward to seeing you. I’ve been having a craving for Oreos and Scotch, but it wouldn’t be the same without you. Any interest? Sean
.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was something. He pressed send and as soon as he did he started waiting for a response.

Lucky for him, there was prep work to do for Toby’s arrival. He’d gotten way too used to the quiet, to forgetting to turn on the lights, to never having milk in the fridge. He went to the market and stocked up on frozen waffles, apple juice, and other staples. He even splurged for the chocolate chip granola bars.

Toby had sounded good when he called every night—if not like Ellie’s personal flack. “Mom started running again,” he said, when he called the first night. “Mom baked a cake,” he reported the next. It sounded like Ellie had pulled herself together, which was both a relief and also a little annoying.

That night he couldn’t sleep. Partly because he was excited to see Toby, partly because he was dreading having to break the news about Calvin.

The next day Toby was back and the apartment was happy chaos again.

“I had fun, Dad,” Toby said. He was smiling, relaxed. He was as close to the old Toby as he’d been in a while. “But it wasn’t like being home.” As long as Toby knew where home was, everything was okay.

Toby put on the Rolling Stones and as he rocked out to “Shattered,” his hair caught air then flopped back down again in true rocker form. Maybe it was time for a haircut. He wondered if Ellie had indulged Toby’s air guitar habit. As he tried to imagine her doing Chrissy Hynde, the miraculous happened. Toby stopped mid-guitar solo to volunteer information.

“So there was this girl named Delia,” he said, looking Sean in the eye with an older-than-eight expression. “She can grind.”

He pictured the kids on a dance floor in some seedy club, this girl rubbing her pelvis against Toby’s ass. There had to be something he was missing. “Huh?”

“On her skateboard.”

This visual was so much better.

“Plus she can do a half-pipe. She was really cool.”

So they both had crushes. He wondered if Toby’s had turned out better than his. “So what’s Delia like?”

“I don’t know. She’s nice.”

“Yeah? Great. So … what does she look like?”

“I don’t know. She’s pretty,” he said with a shrug, to show he didn’t care too much. “She has long hair, kinda brown, and her eyes were happy. Oh yeah, and she wore tie-dyed Tshirts and stuff.”

“So, is she … did you … are you just friends?” What was he asking?

“I have her email address. And I sort of, well, I kind of kissed her goodbye,” Toby said, twisting his mouth to cover up a smile.

“Wow.” Wasn’t Toby a little young for kissing girls? “So you must really like her.”

Toby squirmed a bit. “Yeah, I guess. I don’t know. She told me she had a boyfriend already. But I think she liked me back.”

Atta boy, he thought. Confidence. “Who wouldn’t, Tobe? You’re the best.” He elbowed Toby in the ribs. “I missed you like crazy.”

“I missed you, too, Dad.”

Sean knew he had to tell Toby about Calvin, but did he have to do it instantly? Toby took a shower, and Sean heated up a frozen pizza. While they ate, Toby told him about Ellie’s cottage and how they’d made fires in the fireplace at night and walked on the beach in the snow. He was almost jealous.

He nodded at the right places as Toby recounted Ellie stories, but his mind was on Calvin. He couldn’t send Toby back to school without enough time to process it all. When Toby was brushing his teeth, Sean re-read the mass email he’d received from Bev Shineman:

To the Bradley Community:

It is with great sadness that I’m writing to you today. Calvin Drake passed away last night at Mount Sinai Hospital, a result of complications from a peanut allergy
.

Parents, you should discuss this sad loss with your children. I’ve enclosed a helpful article about talking to children about death. And of course, please contact me if you have any questions or need to discuss your feelings. When school resumes we’ll have discussion groups in homeroom and grief counselors will be available for the children and anyone else who would like to speak with them
.

We are newly committed to our efforts to keep Bradley a nut-free zone. This terrible occurrence was an unfortunate result of a snack that was brought in from the outside. With all of us working together, we can make sure nothing like this happens again
.

Sincerely
,

Dr. Bev Shineman

School Psychologist

He’d practiced a million times, but now nothing seemed right. How to start? One of the “helpful” articles he’d read stressed that there was never a good time to break the news.

Toby stood in the doorway of Sean’s bedroom, traces of toothpaste foam still in the corners of his mouth.

“What is it, Dad?” He seemed grownup despite the superheroes that crawled all over his pajamas. “You look funny.”

“Let’s sit.” He patted his bed slowly. The motion was as much to regulate his own heart rate as it was to summon Toby.

He hopped onto the bed. “You’re freaking me out, Dad.”

“There was an email from school.” He laid his hand on Toby’s back. Maybe he should have read some more articles before having this conversation. He felt entirely unprepared. “Tobe, Calvin died.”

Toby looked at him like he hadn’t heard right.

“Do you understand? Calvin is dead. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, but …”

Sean bit his tongue and waited for the rest of the question. He wasn’t supposed to tell him more than he wanted to hear.

A dark cloud passed over Toby’s face. Then a flicker of hope. “In the SpongeBob video game you get three lives. In Ratchet & Clank, too.”

“Tobe, those are just games. In real life you only get one.”

Toby’s eyes started to fill. “He should get more lives.”

“I know,” he said. “This is so sad. I’m so sad, too.” He reached around Toby and gave him a hug. Toby buried his head in Sean’s shoulder.

“It’s not fair.” Toby was sobbing now, his breathing was ragged and his body shook.

Kids cried all the time because you wouldn’t let them watch
Scooby Doo
or have seconds on dessert or because they fell in the park and tore the skin off of their knee. But watching your child cry because he was filled with profound sadness was worse than awful.

Toby looked up with sad eyes. “You’re supposed to be old when you die,” he said. “Calvin wasn’t old.”

“I know.” Sean wiped his face with his sleeve. “I know.”

“Am I going to die?” Toby’s brain was in overdrive now. Sean could see the questions percolating.

“No, Tobe. Calvin was allergic to peanuts and somehow he ate something with peanuts in it. Most kids don’t die. Almost none.” He could finesse the facts slightly, couldn’t he?

“Are you going to die?”

He was ready for this one, thanks to Jess.

“No, Tobe,” he said. “Not for a long time. I’m not going anywhere.” He swallowed. “Neither is your mom.”

“Is Calvin in heaven?”

He hadn’t thought about that one. He was hoping Toby wouldn’t even know to bring it up. “I don’t know.”

“If he’s not in heaven where is he?”

Toby wanted answers, and Sean wanted to give him some.
Don’t lie
. It kept running through his head. Exactly how far was he supposed to take this not lying thing? Because while he was at it, he might as well throw in that there was no tooth fairy or Santa Claus. “Lots of people believe in heaven, Tobe. If you believe in heaven, then Calvin is definitely there.”

“Is that where your mom and dad are?”

He thought about his parents. About how loud and abrasive they’d been when they were alive and about how empty everything seemed without them. Toby had never even known them. “I don’t know. Nobody really knows what happens when you die.”

“Mom says people are reincarcerated.”

“Reincarnated.”

“Yeah,” Toby said. “They come back as grasshoppers and butterflies.”

“She said that?” Was Ellie out of her fucking mind telling this stuff to Toby? Not that he was faring much better here, but still. “I mean, it
could
be true. But … I don’t … probably not.”

Toby was quiet for a few minutes. “So where
is
Calvin?”

“Like I said, nobody really knows.”

“No, Dad. I mean where
is
he? Right now.”

He was pretty sure Toby was asking about Calvin’s earthly remains, but if he was wrong he didn’t want to be volunteering information like that. “Calvin will always be here because we’ll remember him.” It sounded like a lame Hallmark greeting card and he wished he could take it back as soon as he said it.

Toby was getting annoyed now. “Dad, where’s his
body?”

“It’s probably in a cemetery.”

“Under ground? Buried?”

He nodded. It wasn’t necessary to go into specifics about cremation. That fell into a gray area somewhere between the
don’t lie
and
don’t give too much information
instructions outlined in the article.

“But when he wakes up how will he get out?” Toby looked panicked. “He’ll be trapped.”

This was obviously going to take some time to sink in. “He’s not going to wake up, remember?”

“Oh, right,” Toby said and got quiet. “So I never get to see Calvin again?”

Sean shook his head slowly. “You can remember him, though, and see him in your mind.”

“It’s not fair,” Toby said. He was crying again. “He didn’t get to see my comics. It’s not fair.”

“I know.” He pulled him in, hugged him and rocked him until they both fell asleep. When he woke up at six a.m. with a stiff neck, they were still huddled together.

He tried to sit up without waking Toby, but the pain in his neck made him groan.

“Dad?” Toby said, groggily. “Will you make pancakes?”

As he was mixing and pouring, Sean realized he hadn’t cooked a thing while Toby was away. The routine was comforting. Maybe Toby would feel the same way.

Toby padded into the kitchen. “Can I help?”

“Absolutely.”

Toby dragged a cast iron skillet from the cupboard to the stovetop and gave a serious look. “Stand back,” he said, before turning the dial. A ring of fire leapt up to the pan. Toby had always been good in the kitchen. Responsible, careful. How could he have ADD? Then he thought about what Walt had said. They were watching him all day, much more closely than Sean could. Maybe all he needed was to get the new semester off to a good solid start and they’d lay off him, let him relax. It was worth giving the drugs a shot if it gave Toby some breathing room. Toby deserved that.

“Did you sleep okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Toby said. “I’m still sad about Calvin.”

“Yeah, it’s okay to be sad about it for a long time.” Like probably forever. “Remembering him is good, though, and you can do that anytime you want.”

Toby didn’t bring him up again for the rest of the day. As they moved into their second hour of an endless Monopoly game at the kitchen table, Sean noticed that Toby seemed to have filed the whole thing away. He was sure it would come up again, but for now a break was a happy relief, for both of them.

It seemed like as good a time as any to bring up the other huge topic that had been on his mind all vacation. “I talked to Dr. Altherra the other day.”

“Who?” No name recognition whatsoever.

“You know, the lady—the psychiatrist—we went to. She asked you about school?”

“Yeah?”

“She thinks it might help you pay attention in school if you take some medicine in the morning.”

“Okay.”

“You have to tell me if it makes you feel at all funny—like funny bad.”

Toby shrugged. “Okay.”

And that was that. Sean had been sure there would be more questions, concerns, apprehension. But that had all been Sean’s to deal with. Toby didn’t have to think about the risks or question the decision. If his father told him to take medicine, he needed medicine. It was all so blissfully simple.

The next morning, his hand shook as he tried to cut the pill in half with a dull knife. Toby was so calm right now, so completely himself, so completely non-ADD, it seemed crazy to be doing this. But what did he know about inattentive ADD? He was no psychiatrist. The knife split the pill too quickly and half of it flew across the kitchen. He saved one half, though, and handed it to Toby. “Here you go, try this,” he said, going for a nonchalance he did not feel.