By the time we finally arrived home, Nigel was limp as a soiled dishrag. I slung one of his arms over my shoulder and guided him up the back steps, as if he and I were college roomies returning to our dorm after too much fun down in the ville ancienne. I would have made a decent wingman for my boy, swatting away the nappy-headed beasts and subtly singing his praises to the angels among us.
We mumbled across the landing to the door. It’s not every day a father sees his son high as a dirigible. Rarer still the father supplies the hydrogen. What unimaginable Chutes and Ladders we encounter. What eddies and whirlpools. What burned-out metal frames. I watched Nigel for a moment. His dull eyes. The spittle collecting at the corner of his mouth. Those reedlike arms. A helpless lamb in this world, but morally strong. Could he muster the backbone to be the kind of father I was? I hoped not.
“Hnh,” I said.
“Wuh,” Nigel said. “Wub,” he said. “Ch—”
I pinched his cheek. “Articulation, son. You have to enunciate fiercely.”
“Can we…chocolate cake?”
“I’ll make one,” I said, leading him through the kitchen and into the hallway. When he was small, Nigel would wander down into the valley of the shadow of sleep in this way, and I would point out the sights, the sweetmeat cabins and hairy-knuckled, ravenous accountants, until he made the lowest point of the valley and slipped into faultless, dreamless sleep. “We have everything we need to make a very good cake. We have the eggs and the cocoa and the flour and the sprinkle berries.”
“No,” he said. “Pa, no sprinkle berries. I ain’t six.” And then he promptly leaned forward and evacuated his stomach onto my shoes.
“I suppose you’re not, huh?” I asked. What his exchange lacked in volume, it made up for in colorfulness. I wasn’t as repulsed as I would have been if he were some stranger. I remember another habit of his, this one from infancy. If he was in a particularly rotten mood, Nigel would wait until just after you changed his diaper to deliver a fresh package.
I led Nigel to his bedroom, again bracing him against my body. When I removed my arm, he fell face-first onto his bed, his arms awkwardly bent beneath him. I straightened them out and prepped his shot. He had vomited the pills I gave him not even thirty minutes ago. I couldn’t do anything about that. But I could fill the syringe to nearly double the usual dose. A bead of nacreous liquid pearled at the needle tip. “And I’ll churn some vanilla ice cream.”
“No. No. No,” he said, drooling on the bedspread. “Can’t be vanilla. Gotta be. Chocolate. Chocolate every day. Chocolate every nigh—” I couldn’t be sure, but that last bit sounded like Crown lyrics.
In truth, I had always been a little squeamish. The sight of a firm needle against soft skin raked an ice pick down my brittle spine. And the first time I did it—that is, plunged a shiny two-inch needle into his left butt cheek—I inhaled. I sucked my teeth as if his rampant, squealing pain were my own. But when I thought of it logically, of the fact that I was doing something of profound importance for Nigel’s future, all terror receded, and I was as calm and confident as a coroner over a cadaver.
Nigel sat up on his elbow. “What are you doing with that needle, Dadzel Azazel?”
“Just go to sleep, son,” I said, guiding his head back to his pillow. “You have school in the morning.”
“Lots to learn.” His body relaxed again. I swabbed part of his skinny rump with an alcoholic cotton and let it dry. I steadied the syringe. I aimed. He popped up again. It took everything I had not to drop the syringe. “Heard about a town that’s been burning underground for a hundred years. But the people call it home.”
I should have anticipated that the effects of a powerful sedative on the virgin cardiovascular system of a teenager would be unpredictable. His system was on a roller-coaster ride between wakefulness and sleepfulness.
I went to the kitchen and rummaged for a drink and located a half-consumed bottle of Grand Marnier that I uncorked. I sat on the wicker chair that Penny had made during her wicker-chair-making phase and sipped my drink. Penny was a maker. She was always making things. Wicker chairs, ceramic bowls, our son. Did that make me a destroyer? The brandy tasted like nail filings.
I heard the loveliest harp music. Like something you might encounter in a fancy tea room. Or maybe in the garden of a Russian oligarch. The air felt chilly.
“I understand now why you’re doing it.” Penny poured me more Marnier. Her hair was shortened to a pixie cut, a style she’d given up after we married. In the burgeoning light, she seemed to wear a red halo.
“You do?”
“Oh, I was a fool to stand in your way.” She tilted her head to the side and batted her lashes. “It’s such a dangerous world for the great-great-great-great-grandchildren of slaves. How could I ever hope to understand?”
“There’s no reason to be sarcastic,” I said.
She sauntered into the hallway.
“Wait, I’m sorry. Can we just talk?”
She continued into the dining room, sat on the table, and folded her legs in front of her. She grabbed one of her old paintbrushes. Neither Nigel nor myself ever touched that little shrine of arts and crafts materials, a shrine to Penny.
She flicked the brush at me. “You didn’t want to become your father. Hollowed out. Forgotten.” She twirled the brush like a baton. “What happened to Sir changed him. But it changed you, too. Sent you right down this water slide.” She motioned with her free hand. “You don’t really think you’ll win, do you?”
“I’m winning!” I said. “We’re winning. All of us are this close—”
Penny grabbed my chin. “You can level with me, babe. I know you feel it in here.” She patted my chest. “No matter how hard you fight to protect our son, you keep going down down down and taking him with you.”
“I’m doing the best I can.”
“But the best isn’t good enough, is it? You’re making him worse.”
“I—”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“I know.”
Penny laughed, halfway between a giggle and snort. “Don’t cry, kiddo.” She climbed off the table and padded toward Nigel’s room. The heel of her bare foot receded into the darkness of the hallway. She peeked into Nigel’s room. She tsked. Then she smiled at me in a way I can only describe as malevolent.
“You’re not my Penny,” I said, suddenly fearful.
“Then what am I?” she asked, and entered Nigel’s darkened room.
I reached out. My throat was so tight, I could hardly talk. “Don’t go in there.”
“Shut it. You wouldn’t want to scare our baby.” I dashed into the room and turned on the light. The spirit was gone. Nigel slept quietly, his comforter and pillows all on the floor. I went to the hall window that looked out onto the driveway. Up above the roof of the house next door, a green scarf spiraled on a current.
I woke up with a start and rubbed my face, which was clammy with sweat. My device said it was around three A.M. Nigel was still asleep. The syringe was on the dresser next to me. I grabbed it.