The toaster dings. Good. Two wedges of waffle, hot and ready. Yes, they’re processed. Yes, they were probably in cold storage for a decade before purchase. But I didn’t burn them this time, at least, and create a new catastrophe. Don’t want a replay of when I tried to make Nigel French toast. Sticky raw egg and bubbling burned butter everywhere. Scalded my skin. But that was weeks and months and weeks ago.
Now is different. I’ve snipped away the deckled edges of breakfast preparation for a more modest process. Compartmentalized the routine into something I can handle efficiently, in few movements. Undercounter to sink to microwave in five easy steps. Squat, lift, shift, shake, and drop. An interpretive dance for the morning munch.
Organic syrup. Pulsing in the microwave. Half minute to the correct temperature. Cantaloupe, sliced anonymously before purchase and hermetically sealed in cellophane. No muss or fuss. One less thing to trouble the heart. Fissure the package with the tine of a fork. Voilà. Easiest thing in the world. I would do better if I could. French toast. Soy bacon. Hand-juiced juice. More than just a slice of cantaloupe but blueberries, too, strawberries, raspberries, and snozzberries. I’d have farmers come to us, riding atop their tractors. They would schlep the produce into our kitchen, trailing mud from the fields. This I would do for Nigel.
Fold a paper napkin just so. Paper, because a spreading, berry-colored stain on a cloth napkin is too much to bear on mornings like these. Set out saucers, forks, and knives for two. Just for two. Only two. Do not set a third placement. Do not dwell.
Light cuts in through the slit window as if it were the end of the day. A guillotine for dust and shadow. But it’s barely seven A.M. Soon all the shadows will perish—blown away—like Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Oslo, and Perth. Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t bloviate. The Japanese cities, at least, are fine today.
Grab glass mugs from the freezer. Two ice cubes per mug. Just two. Only two. Forget that recurrent dream where you kiss your son’s forehead and your lips stick, so you push away with your hands, but they, too, stick. Soon you are suffocating. And then a faceless, fingerless corpse.
People argue on the radio. Last month’s attacks by ADZE by a dreaded man wearing a creepy wooden mask and white linen suit. Killing the killers is the only way to peace. It’s what Jesus would do. Shoot them in the nads. Deport the rest, children included. But first sterilize the lot—from babies to grandparents—and implant tracking devices in their bellies that detonate if they set foot on American soil again. Pike the heads. Pike the—
Boop. Radio to classical station playing Barber’s adagio. Boop. To station bumping Tchaikovsky. Boy, that cat sure can swing. It’s all arithmetic. Exhale unhappy thoughts. Out with the minuses. In with the pluses. Kittens, puppies, and whiskers on both. Bright copper kettle. Use oven mitt to pick it up. Pour steaming water over instant coffee crystals and appreciate all the good things I’ve been doing for myself. Exercising at the Sky Tower gym on the treadmill overlooking downtown. Three days a week, or four if I can manage. Looking both ways before crossing the street. Greeting strangers in the elevators. Under no circumstances screaming at rude drivers or pale short people in rain slickers gawking at me from great distances. Pragmatism before teenage wasteland emotions.
I take my place at the table and stare into my coffee water, a foot-brown pond. I lower Nigel’s waffle onto his plate. And the fruit.
There’s an absence of noise from Nigel’s room. No squeaks from his bed. No puff of cool air from his ceiling fan. Finding his door closed, I call his name. The door to my bedroom shifts, but Nigel’s not in my bedroom. No one is in my bedroom when I’m not in it, even though that familiar red-haired scent still drifts on the house currents like a melody. My bedroom is empty. My life—
This is logic. The present. The here and now. Don’t. Think. A. Bout. The. Past. Pull your ring finger back too far, and let the pain stake you to the ground as though you were a witch.
Nigel appears in the kitchen and says hey. I say hello and good morning. We sit at the table, faking consumption. I pour syrup onto my squares. I cut my squares into cubes. I dissect my cubes into abstract shapes. What is food even for? And whose idea was it anyway? I pour syrup over the mess until my plate is a sluice of yellow and brown, like a spring-thaw mudslide. Nigel has sipped his juice two or three times. But his glass is still nearly overflowing.
He let his hair grow out, to my surprise, for which I’m thankful. One less thing to fight over. But he still resists spot countermeasures. So I’ve established a market-based system to overcome his reticence. He’s almost a teenager and wants things. New shoes. New shirts. Things that go beep. Things that light up. I provide a small amount of money when he uses the toning cream. A larger amount of money when he takes the antimelanin tincture. The stuff finally came in from Eritrea. It arrived one day in a box lined with white down. Tincture’s active ingredient: albino turtle shell. It was said the fishermen used to throw the albinos back. They wanted fish, after all. But now they go searching for the white turtles. They have to net a couple hundred dark ones to make the harvest economically feasible. But one white hit makes a day, apparently.
Nigel doesn’t wear hats anymore. I can’t pay him enough to.
The tincture came in a bottle like the kind that holds cough syrup. I pour a shivering tablespoon’s worth. Open the hangar, there goes the plane. He rolls his eyes when I check under his tongue with a depressor. Have to make sure he isn’t holding the stuff in a pocket of his mouth. Trust but verify. I lay a small amount of cash on the table.
This is to say nothing of the puckered wound on the inside of his elbow. Once a week there is injected for a startling sum a supposedly highly effective compound of things I cannot pronounce that disperse into Nigel’s young body and collect melanin in much the same way garbage men collect trash. I’ve noticed some change in Nigel’s complexion, but I no longer trust my perception.
“It’s what your mother wanted.”
Nigel doesn’t react for a moment. He lifts an eyebrow. “That’s right, Dad. She said so herself.” He grabs the cash. He grabs his bag and goes outside. He’s sitting in the car, waiting for me. I’m sitting in here, waiting. I take my hat from the chair next to me.
We drive the route to the School Without Walls. No music. Too many cars drifting like angry manatees. An airless commute.
The Centurial Compilation plays through the stereo, a playlist of my favorite music from long ago, given by Sir. Nigel has earbuds in his ears, a portable game—a new purchase—in his hands, and an egg-shaped wrist device that pulses green at random intervals. Where is he? How do I find my son?
We pass a billboard atop a restaurant down one of the cross streets. It had been an ad for PHH. Then it was tagged by ADZE. Then it was painted blank. Now there’s half of an A on the canvas, like the graffiti is redrawing itself.
I park across the street from the entrance to the School Without Walls because dozens of other cars clog the reverse lane. Nigel gets out. I shout for him to look both ways, but he doesn’t. He pulls up his hoodie.
A few other students fall in behind him. The other students are a dark conclave. It’s as if Nigel has collected into his sphere of influence all the kids who are anything but white. Although there is one blond girl. I get out of the car, not exactly sure why I’m following. I fail to note a city bus railroading from my left. The driver leans on the horn, which is curiously high-pitched. My hat flies off, but I catch it and press backward into the side of the car. Nigel and the others, at the top of the steps, watch me before entering the school together. I fall into the Bug and hold my hat against my chest.