LITTLE BOY ALONE

Fat Man takes Little Boy for a ride in the car. He says they’re going to the doctor. Little Boy says he doesn’t want to. He says he’ll run away if Fat Man tries to take him to the doctor. Fat Man lifts Little Boy on his shoulder like a bale of hay. He throws him in the backseat of the car. They drive away.

Once they’ve left the hotel grounds, Fat Man says, “I’m not taking you to the doctor.”

“What?” says Little Boy.

“But when we get back, we have to say you went.”

“Fine.”

The car bumps along. Little Boy says, “Then where are we going?”

“The movies,” says Fat Man. “There’s a new Able and Baker picture I want to see.”

“Then what’ll we do?”

“We’ll go back home,” says Fat Man. “We’ll tell Rosie she was right. The doctor diagnosed you with a rare form of dwarfism. He says it’s not hereditary, though. That way she won’t worry anymore if there’s something I’m passing on to the baby.”

“Is there something you’re passing on to the baby?”

“Damned if I know. But you’re a dwarf now. Got it?”

“But I’m just a little boy. That’s all.”

“I know it,” says Fat Man. “But you really should be growing. That’s what little boys do.”

Little Boy sulks.

They see the Able and Baker film. This one is a romantic comedy. The filmmakers play with the twins’ reputation by making them portray two characters, two men who compete for the same woman’s love: two identical twins separated at birth, adopted by very different families, living very different lives, in total ignorance of each other’s existence. The woman they’re competing over is a secretary. One of them is her boss. The other’s a tough, sleazy mobster. The roles are credited to the brothers collectively, so that it’s impossible to say which is which, or if perhaps they trade between scenes. The boss is cool, calm, collected, and responsible, but perhaps a little too stern. He never smiles, though his eyes do sparkle, and when he tilts his head a certain way—well, he must be something like happy. The mobster is a hothead, constantly angry, ready to explode. But he’s passionate as well. He and the secretary share some kind of kiss. He lets her see him cry, and he’s beautiful when he cries, really gorgeous. So the secretary has to choose, and it’s difficult because each man speaks to a different side of her. She begins to diverge as a character in the movie’s second act, becoming two women. The boss’s loyal helpmate and the gangster’s partner in crime. In a dress appropriate to the office and a fine scarf, she helps the boss navigate a meeting in a client’s home, with all its social complications. In a too-short skirt and half-open blouse, she helps the tough steal several tins of caviar for a dinner at home. But eventually she’s got to choose.

The strange part is the way they shot the movie. It would have been big news to get the Hanway brothers on screen together, and the plot seems to beg for it, but the film is made as if they really only had one actor to play both roles, avoiding at all costs of contrivance and implausibility the meeting of the two characters. Their final confrontation takes place over the phone. The results are awkward and undramatic. Fat Man, their single biggest fan, is still captivated. Little Boy, meanwhile, is bored; he only likes it when he gets to see the main lady’s knees or a hint of her breasts.

“This all but proves my theory,” raves Fat Man on the way home. “They’ve divided the emotional spectrum between them. They did it by hot and cool, it seems. One of them—Able, I think—is responsible for reserve, calm, care, gentle things and gentle feelings. The other is in charge of passions. Anger, fear, hatred, love, pity, and the like. That must be how they do it. That must be how they manage.”

Little Boy rolls his eyes. “How do you manage?”

“I don’t. Misery, joy, pride, guilt. I’ve got to do everything around here.”

“I don’t want to be a dwarf,” says Little Boy. “I want to be me. I don’t see why we can’t do it that way. Tell them I’m just still little and young.”

“You want me to tell her you’ve got a mental disorder too?”

“No,” says Little Boy, and he crosses his arms.

Rosie takes the news well. “You poor thing,” she says, hugging Little Boy to her breast, rubbing his back. “Will you be okay? You poor thing. You tell us if you need anything.”

He will soon be done with school. Then he can work at the hotel full time. What a lucky little dwarf is he.

 

Sometimes Little Boy sees Claire at school because he makes the mistake of turning around and looking where she’s sitting. She keeps her eyes on her books. She chews her pencil. It makes a crunchy pulpy sound like it might break, or she might bite through. She blows the hair from her face. He never accidentally looks where Peter sits because Peter sits right behind him. Sometimes Claire walks past Little Boy to get where she’s going. She seems like twice his height. He can barely see her face past her breasts, looking up at her as he does.

One day, he follows Peter and Claire all the way home, walking quiet as a mouse, hiding behind other people, brick corners, mailboxes, lampposts, and road signs. It’s easy to hide when you’re small.

They go to a bridge overlooking the river and sit on the railing together. When no one’s too close to them they kiss. Little Boy climbs a nearby tree for a good view. He can’t hear what they’re saying. They hunch, leaning inward, cheek to cheek, and seem to whisper, holding hands. She nods often. He talks much more than she does. Little Boy thinks what an idiot Peter is to talk more than he listens, especially with Claire, who always said such lovely things, though Little Boy could rarely understand them.

He misses Peter’s friendship, if that’s what they had. He misses Claire’s hand between his legs, pressing—searching for signs of life. She could have searched a little longer. She might have found him there.

When the baby comes due, Fat Man uses Rosie’s money to rent a hotel room by the hospital in the city. He tells her at dinner. Because he does not mean to bring his brother, he does not tell Little Boy, though Little Boy is also there.

Little Boy pretends to misunderstand. “Will I have my own bed?”

Fat Man looks to Rosie.

Rosie says, “We thought you could stay here and look after the hotel for us while I have the baby.”

Fat Man says, “We think you’re ready.”

“I thought the staff would look after the hotel,” says Little Boy, motioning at the recently hired groundskeeper and the repairman, who eat tonight with the family and the guests.

Rosie says, “You are the staff.”

Little Boy looks down at his plate. Greasy, buttered carrot coins, bits of cabbage, baked chicken with a lemon glaze, sawed to pieces, bacon. He works to summon tears, screwing up his face, tightening the hinges and the cords. “I never got to stay in anybody else’s hotel,” he says, when the tears fail to come. “Why are you leaving me alone? Is it because of my condition? Is it because you like the new baby better than me?”

Fat Man thumps the table with his fist at the word “condition.”

Rosie puts her hand on his hand. “He can have his own room,” she says. “Next door.”

When Fat Man goes to town to see about a second room it turns out the hotel has none free on that floor. If he considers renting one on another floor he doesn’t do it, perhaps because he understands Little Boy would never accept it. They all go together. They all share the one room. Little Boy chats up Rosie as Fat Man checks them in. He asks her is she looking forward to the baby. She says yes she is looking forward to meeting him. He asks her is she afraid of giving birth. She says that women rarely die now if they have a hospital bed, which she will.

“I didn’t know it could kill you. Now that scares me too,” he says, touching her stomach. “This little thing. He could do that much damage?”

“It’s very rare,” says Rosie, removing his hand.

Fat Man carries all their luggage, refusing the porter. Little Boy squeezes Rosie’s hand as they ride the elevator up. She doesn’t squeeze back, but she doesn’t take it away.

Little Boy will have to sleep on the floor. He elects to sleep at the foot of the bed, explaining that otherwise “somebody” might step on him when they get out of bed. “Someone big and fat.”

Little Boy wakes as Fat Man tries to sneak out the hotel room door. He whispers, “If you let me come along I won’t wake Rosie.”

Fat Man watches Little Boy pull on his socks and shoes, his big coat, his furry hat and knit gloves. He keeps his long underwear on as it was. They sneak together, keeping quiet all the way down the hall, all the way down the stairs, all the way out the hotel. They walk hand in hand, hands in gloves, huddled, chins tucked in their collars.

“It’s like old times,” says Little Boy.

“I guess,” says Fat Man.

“You and me, walking together like brothers. You want to get something to eat?”

“Everywhere’s closed.”

“We could break in somewhere.”

“You don’t do that if you’ve got the money to pay.” Fat Man pats his back pocket, indicating his wallet.

“I’d like a raise,” says Little Boy.

“I’ll ask the widow.”

“You should call her Rosie.” Little Boy kicks a frozen chunk of snow. It skitters down the block. “Or your wife.”

“I don’t like to,” says Fat Man. “I don’t deserve her.”

“What’d she ever do that was so great?”

“You’ll understand someday.”

“Are you scared about the baby?”

“I’m worried that he’ll be like us.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean a bad person. Or no person at all. I wish I could see what he looks like in there. I have dreams. Dreams where he comes out diseased, or he kills us, or there isn’t anything in there at all—only a kind of force. A pain.”

“You’re not a bad person,” says Little Boy.

“Yes I am.”

“You were always kind to me.”

“I beat you.”

“Sometimes a child needs it,” says Little Boy. He blows a stream of vapor into the air.

Fat Man lights a cigarette.

Little Boy says, “Can I have one?”

“No,” says Fat Man. “They’ll stunt your growth.”

Little Boy stays in the hotel four days alone. With Rosie’s permission, he orders in food. He tips too generously because he thinks he deserves to spend the money, and because the staff are peons like him. They have his sympathy.

He eats as much as he can because he wants to, because he still can, because he is so thin, and because he still needs to grow. Protein. Sugar. Carbohydrates. No fiber—he needs to keep it in.

He rolls around in bed.

He watches out the window.

He writes a letter to Claire.

He destroys the letter.

He sits at the hotel desk for six hours, drawing on the complimentary hotel stationery, anything he can remember.

He draws the nurse who carried him to the theatre.

He draws her kissing the man, her friend.

He draws a mask that watched them.

He draws a pig.

He draws a Japanese soldier using his foot to trigger his rifle.

He draws Mickey Mouse erasing himself.

He draws Fat Man scowling.

He draws Claire.

He draws Peter.

He draws naked breasts. Several pairs of different sizes.

He tears up his drawings and throws them out the window, where they fall like the snow.

He tries to masturbate and fails, looking out the window at the girls that pass, all bundled up for warmth. The eroticism of a scarf. The sexiness of thick socks.

Fat Man comes home with his exhausted wife in a wheelchair—they will be moved to a suite on the ground floor. He also has a baby. The baby is normal. She is wrapped in many layers of blankets, wearing a yellow hat. She has big eyes like marbles. Fat Man insists she is beautiful.

Fat Man says, “I have a daughter! A healthy, lovely daughter!”

Fat Man says, “You have a cousin!”

He offers Little Boy the baby. Little Boy will not hold the baby.

Instead Little Boy dotes on Rosie, who glows from lack of sleep and the layer of sweat and grime that builds on her as she goes days without bathing. He brings her glasses of water.

He watches her breastfeed. He sits and pretends to draw, or read one of the books Fat Man got him, facing perpendicular to her wheelchair or the bed, so that he can keep her in the corner of his eye. She is too tired for modesty.

Every morning Little Boy asks what is the baby’s name.

Fat Man says, “I don’t know.”

“What about Rosie Jr.?” asks Little Boy.

“That’s stupid,” says Rosie, breastfeeding.

Little Boy looks at her a little too long.

She says, “Keep your eyes to yourself.”

They drive home together. The baby has been named. It was Little Boy’s idea. He was looking down on her in Rosie’s arms.

Rosie said, “Would you like to hold the baby?”

This had been offered many times, and each time Little Boy said no.

Today he said yes.

The baby weighed six pounds. Little Boy never asked, but they told him. She felt lighter than that. He was surprised by how thin she was, by the way he could feel her bones through her baby fat.

He said, “She looks like a flower.”

“What kind?” said Rosie.

Little Boy brushed a hair from her forehead. “A magnolia.”

“Magnolia,” said Fat Man. “We’ll call her Maggie for short.”

Her name is Magnolia. Fat Man and Rosie let Little Boy hold her all the way home, in the back seat. He kisses her head. He lets her clutch his fingers in her little hands. When she messes herself he doesn’t complain, but breathes it in.