The Sky Is Falling (12 page)

Awesome?
What the hell? I wondered. What was that kid thinking about me?

After dinner they went downstairs to practise. Joe Sr.'s lair is down there, a TV, a stationary bicycle, an unambitious set of weights. It's also where he stores and listens to his vast punk record collection. Maria is not allowed, not even to get at the black hole of the bathroom.

When Joe Jr. was around twelve, he began spending time in The Lair. While it hurt to be replaced as the preferred parent, I knew it was only fair. I'd been tightly and intricately attached to Joe Jr. I never sent him to daycare or preschool. When he started kindergarten, I used to lie on the living room floor for the entire two and a half hours, imagining all the calamities that could transpire while he was out of my sight. Earthquake. Fire. Gunman walking in spraying bullets. Pedophile lurking in a bathroom stall. Out-of-control car careering through the playground. Somewhere, some rogue state firing off something nuclear. I believed that if I worked through each of these scenarios, they would be less likely to happen because, statistically, the chance of thinking of a bad thing happening before the bad thing actually happens is much smaller than a bad thing happening. More people are killed in car accidents than people who think they might be killed in car accidents. Needless to say, it was a trying year.

Downstairs, the racket started as Rachel and I loaded the dishwasher in tandem. “I could hardly look at that poor boy,” she said.

“Simon?”

“It nauseates me.”

“His acne or his ears?”

She grimaced. “Acne is natural. Self-mutilation isn't.”

I nodded. “Ugly is the new beautiful.”

“Again,” she sighed. “They never learn. Look at Joe. His ears are in tatters from all those pins. Is he a physician or an embattled tomcat? I'm sure his patients laugh at him behind his back.”

“I don't think so. They're probably just happy to see him after the six-hour wait.”

She nudged me. Simon had come up the stairs. He gawked at us briefly—well, me—then disappeared down the hall, returning a moment later with an enormous boot in each hand. Before closing the basement door again, he cast me a backward glance.

I felt annoyed by his attention now. The grey-haired Shaughnessy matron mimed a finger down her throat. “At least they didn't tattoo themselves back then,” she went on. “You remember Silly Putty?”

“Sure. It's still around.”

“Joe used to push it onto the Saturday comics, then stretch it out of shape. That's what those tattoos are going to look like in fifty years. These kids don't realize they're going to be old one day.”

And I thought: maybe they're not.

A new song started up downstairs. Soundproofing spared us the lyrics, but we could hear that one of the three chords was different from the three chords in the last song.

“Does Joey have a tattoo?” Rachel asked.

I hated to tell her. It was a sore point for me too. “A very small one. Tiny. Joe went with him to get it. To make sure about the needle. Anyway, all this is wonderful for Joe. It's the dream of every punk rocker who ever sold out. His offspring is picking up the torch.”

“I guess.”

Then they called us, so we dried our hands and started down the stairs to where the walls are painted black and the light bulbs red. “Rachel?” I said, before I lost the chance. “Did you see the article?”

She turned around on the stairs and, under the light, looked drenched in blood. “That's why I came so early. I thought you might want to talk. But you seemed distracted. I've been waiting for you to say something.”

“I'm sorry, Rachel.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, but I didn't get the chance to read it. It didn't mention me, did it?”

“No.”

“I feel better now. Thanks.”

“All that was a long time ago, Jane.”

“I know,” I said.

It's a gallery of album covers down there: D.O.A., Pointed Sticks, The Clash, The Ramones, The Subhumans, the petit point Sex Pistols, framed, in a place of honour. Strings of interlocked safety pins hang in the doorway like a beaded curtain. Drawing it aside for Rachel, I wondered how many safety-pin factories had closed since the demise of punk. Joe had probably single-handedly kept one in operation. As well as the curtain, he once made himself an entire suit of safety-pin chain mail. This was during med school, which, according to Joe, was one long, jittery Wake Up–pill high. The problem with the suit was it wasn't safe to sit in.

I sat on the weight press bench while Joe led his mother to the only chair, an armchair rescued from the Dumpster, his threadbare throne. He'd changed into his Sex Pistols T, a decade unwashed at least. (He claims it's too fragile to get wet.) Joe Jr. wore something affectedly torn. Simon wasn't wearing a shirt at all, treating us to the full spectacle of his bubonic back and chest. They had their boots on and the dog collars bristling with studs. While Joe fiddled with the amp, the younger Joes bounced up and down like tennis players warming up.

“Ready?” Joe asked.

Joe Sr. armed himself with the bass, the boys their guitars. They one-two-threed and exploded into a raucous “Now I Want to Sniff Some Glue,” segued into “Fucked Up Ronnie,” leaping dervishly, crashing into each other, Joe's forty-three-year-old pectorals bouncing along with him. The exertion of punk is all the cardio he gets and, already, he shone with sweat.

At the end of the medley, Rachel burst into applause. “How stirring!”

Rachel went home after the concert. The boys retreated to Joe Jr.'s room, Joe Jr. having successfully avoided talking to me all evening. Joe Sr. was in the shower. I had the feeling he was doing it too, avoiding me, so I went to bed where I lay in wait for him. I took
Fathers and Sons
because I thought maybe I could get Joe Jr. to read it, since he'd already expressed an
interest
. The first thing I did was look for that Bazarov quote.

The shower shut off in the next room and a minute later, Joe came in with a towel tucked around his waist. He smiled and, turning his back, dropped the skirt, effectively mooning me. “Ha!” I said as he fell naked between the sheets. “That's perfect. Listen.
Art is just a means of making money, as sure as haemorrhoids
exist.
”

He laughed. “Someone came in with a bleeding case a few weeks ago. Really gory. The guy wept for joy when I told him what it was. He thought he had cancer. Everyone thinks they have cancer.”

I closed
Fathers and Sons
. “What was wrong with Simon tonight?”

“What?”

“Didn't he seem to be acting strangely?”

“He's fifteen. I know! How about The Piles?”

“Is something going on?” I asked.

He immediately reached for
The Journal of Emergency Medicine
lying on the lid of the laundry hamper for a pretence of reading before sleep. “Masturbation probably.”

“Tonight?”

“Continuously.”

“Did you see the paper?”

He pushed his face a little deeper into the shielding pages. “I glanced at it.”

“You saw the article?”

“Yes.”

“Yes! So where is it now?”

He tossed his magazine on the floor and turned to me, pouchy under the eyes, I noticed now. The poor man was tired. “I called Joe Jr. at school and asked him to get rid of it. I thought you hadn't seen it, Jane. I didn't want you to be upset.”

And I was filled with shame because it's easy to forget that my moods affect them too. In our early years, Joe was convinced I had an off-season sort of SAD. Every spring he would bring me pills the way other husbands bring cheering flowers. Really, there's nothing clinically wrong with me. I just feel guilty whenever the trees flower.

“Rachel said I wasn't mentioned.”

“It was the same old thing. Those two. The bomb. You know it all by now.”

“Did Joey ask why you wanted him to do this?”

“No.”

“Did he say anything about it tonight?”

“No.”

“That's funny,” I said, though really, why would he be curious about his mother? Except that Simon seemed to be. “So where is the article now?” I asked.

“He's got it, I guess. You want me to get it?”

“Tomorrow,” I said and, satisfied he was just trying to help, I kissed the good, long-suffering doctor, heroic lancer of haemorrhoids, and let him get some sleep.

Chekhov was a doctor. His stories are full of medical men and women, the occasional scoundrel, but most of them sympathetic and hardworking. Dr. Samoylenko with his kebabs and mullet soup. Dr. Ragin in “Ward Number Six,” who ends up committed to the same asylum as the patients he neglects. The frustrated, overworked Dr. Ovchinnikov in “An Unpleasant Business.” Joe is, I think, most like Dr. Osip Stepanych Dymov from “The Grasshopper,” in the background making everything run, taking no credit. No one remembered Dymov until exactly half past eleven every night when he threw open the dining room doors and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, supper is served.” Throughout dinner his wife would call him her darling
maître d'hôtel
and extol his charms to her arty guests.
“Gentlemen, look at his forehead! Dymov, turn your profile to us.
Gentlemen, look! The face of a Bengal tiger, but an expression as kind
and charming as a deer's. Oh, you sweet darling!”
Yet she started an affair with her painting teacher, and when the doctor found out, he began inviting a friend to dine with them so Olga would not have to lie. And after dinner, when his friend played the piano, Dymov would say,
“Why, hang it all, my dear fellow, let's have
something really sad!”

Joe has a raptor's face, but a deer's expression too. He would, of course, ask for something really angry.

When Joe Jr. was younger I was fearless. Nightly I would brave the obstacle course of Transformers, the carpet land-mined with Lego, slippery with hockey cards. Willingly I risked these childish hazards because I needed to be sure he was actually still there in his captain's bed, tucked in and breathing and safe. Safe from the harm I'd imagined throughout the day. But as he got older and slept less soundly, he'd sense my intrusion and wake. I had to stop checking on him despite my urge to protect him, which persists even now that he's a foot taller than I am and perfectly capable of looking after himself. It should be easier, but it's not. It's worse than ever. The older he gets, the more imperilled, or so I feel anyway. Because of Pascal. Because, what if the same thing happened to Joe Jr.?

I tossed and turned. I curled my toes up tightly, then relaxed them, did the same with my feet, then my calves, and so on, like you're supposed to, but gave up. Gave up and gave in to the compulsion and went to Joe Jr.'s room to make sure he was okay. Standing in his bedroom doorway, I faced different hazards now. His scorn, for one. I couldn't even see him, but I heard him. He breathes like his dad. All that was visible were the fluorescent constellations stuck to the ceiling, still glowing after all these years like the heavenly bodies they represent. When I noticed them, I was amazed, just as I am nightly amazed by the reappearance of the stars and how they prove that, against all odds, the world has endured another twenty-four hours. They gave me courage and so I shuffled in, feeling my way with my feet until my shins collided with the bed. I froze while Joe Jr. slept on, oblivious to my bumbling—until I sat down.

“Ow!”

I sprang up. “Oh, God. I'm sorry. I woke you.”

Groggy. “Mom? You sat on my leg.”

“Sorry!”

“What time is it?”

“Shh. Go back to sleep. I'm leaving,” I said.

“What are you doing in my room?”

“Nothing. I'm leaving.”

I turned and walked straight into the edge of the door. It felt like a punch. More stars, brighter now, and a waterfall in my eyes. My nose sang with pain and when I cupped it, I felt something warm running out. Joe Jr. switched on the lamp.

“Are you okay?”

As soon as I could see, as soon as I ascertained that blood had not been shed, I turned to Joe Jr. sitting up in the bed. These days I rarely see him undefended by attitude like this and, in that moment, he looked exactly like his baby self. The clock on the bedside table, its face round and reproving, jabbed its hands past two-thirty.

“You want the article, I guess,” he said.

What I actually wanted was that he would always and forever be safe.

Joe and I have tried to raise Joe Jr. in such a way that lying would be unnecessary. It seemed we were successful, for his confession spilled right out. “Dad asked me to take it. That was why I came home early.
And
because I was bored.” But the next thing he said just floored me.

“Were you a terrorist, Mom?”

1984

A grey quilt thrown across December. I glanced up and, remembering the missiles, quickly hoisted my umbrella. As though a bit of nylon stretched over some flimsy metal ribs could save me! Then the Reliant, so motley, so cheerful, pulled into the bus stop and honked. Dieter unrolled the passenger window so Pete could call out from the driver's side. “Get in, Zed!” To Dieter, Pete said, “Let Zed sit in front.”