The Kid was finally asleep. There were nights when he shut down at eight o’clock with no more resistance than a halfhearted breathy moan, and there were nights when he exploded with fears, tantrums, and furious stimming. Remaining flexible, creative, and patient helped. A little. After eight months or so of single parenthood, I was becoming almost sympathetic of my ex-wife’s failure to cope.
I had mummy-wrapped my son in a spare sheet—the pressure helped him relax—and read to him from the only nontechnical car book that he allowed, The Elephant Who Liked to Smash Small Cars. While he did not often laugh—in fact, he was usually startled and frightened by others’ laughter—he did giggle. It sounded like squirrels fighting, but it was the free expression of pure delight, for him and for me. So, though I could repeat all the words of the book by memory—and after the initial reading, so could he—I would have read it every night, if he had let me.
Most nights it was car books. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Automobiles; The A to Z of Cars; The Car: A History of the Automobile; Muscle Cars, Detroit Rising; Ford: The Car and the Dynasty; How Cars Work; Classic Cars; Antique Cars; Detroit’s 50 Biggest Losers. Some nights I read to him; other nights he read. He didn’t read, of course. He memorized. When he read aloud, he mimicked the delivery of whoever had first read the page to him. Not the exact voice, but a simulacrum, with identical pace, inflection, and tone. Sometimes it was the half-Cajun, half-southern-syrup drawl of his grandmother; other times the sound of his mother, his uncle, my father, his babysitter, or his teacher at school. And sometimes it sounded like me.
I wrote a to-do list for Carolina, our Costa Rican part-time housekeeper, mentioning for the umpteenth time that his SpongeBob sheets should not be bleached because that made the colors fade, and my son liked his colors always to be the same. Exactly the same. Her English, however, was no better than my Spanish—what little I had was mostly expletives, learned in prison, or references to food and drink, the only trophy from a deep-sea fishing trip out of Cabo before I was married.
My laptop was open, recharging on the table while softly playing the Ladies and Gentlemen . . . the Grateful Dead live album. The twenty-two-minute jam on “Lovelight” deserved to be blasted from my KEF speakers in the other room, but I had deferred that bit of self-indulgence until my son went away to college.
I swung the screen around and typed a quick search for the Spanish word for bleach. Lejía. The pronunciation guide was no help. Quitar color. Blanquear. I tried out “No quitar color, por favor” until it flowed as easily as my best Spanish sentence, “Una más cerveza, por favor.”
Then I remembered—he would need T-shirts for camp. I felt like I was always remembering something I should never have forgotten. School was almost out, and the Kid was enrolled in a special-needs day camp, though I was sure he would have been much happier spending the summer at an automotive school, or working at a car wash. He would need shorts, too. And sweatpants for the cool days. And bathing suits for the pool. Did they make kids’ bathing suits in flat black? Beige? My son had strict rules about what colors could be worn on which days. And none of the clothes could have writing on them. He hated clothes with writing. Did the camp have a uniform? Impossible. Well, if they did, let’s hope that it was colorful, so that he could attend at least twice a week! And then it occurred to me that his favorite black pants were now short enough to show his ankles. Could he get through the whole summer without them, so I wouldn’t have to deal with the tantrum of trying to get him to wear a different pair—at least until fall, by which time almost anything could happen? I put my head on the table for a moment and closed my eyes. It wasn’t the tantrums that wore me down, it was the day-to-day minutiae filtered through my son’s unique perspective. Nothing was simple.
The obvious conclusion was that I was a terrible parent. I wasn’t bad as a father. I read to my son, I took him on fun outings, I made him “Dad” kind of food—scrambled eggs and grilled cheese sandwiches. I bought him ice cream. But without his entourage of shadow, housekeeper, teachers, doctors, and occasional volunteer duty from my father, the Kid and I would have been at each other’s throats. And the smart money would be on him.
But I had chosen this challenge and never regretted it. My ex-wife, Angie, had done her alcoholic, narcissistic best, but by the time I got out of prison and found them, she had abandoned the boy to her mother, who kept him locked in a spare bedroom. She wasn’t being deliberately cruel; she just couldn’t cope with a child who communicated mostly in grunts, growls, and quotes from commercials. A child who bit whenever threatened; would not be held, hugged, or kissed; flew into violent rages or deep depressions when his clothes were the wrong color; banged into furniture until he bled; and regularly threw himself down sets of stairs in an attempt to fly. He had other quirks, too. Those were just the highlights.
It took a small army of specialists to get him there, but the Kid was talking, his balance and coordination were much improved, and he was learning how to control his rages and fears. He hadn’t bitten anyone in weeks. But every night, after he was asleep, I sat staring down Broadway from my eighth-floor window, reminding myself of all I had not done for him that day. The list got longer every night.
My cell phone rang.
“Hey, how’d it go?”
“Ah, mia batata.” It was Skeli, in my unbiased opinion the most completely perfect woman on the planet. When we first met she was working as the decorative foil in Roger’s clown act and finishing her doctorate. She was powerful, beautiful, and intensely independent—I did mention that I was unbiased—and a New York survivor. Despite having been doused in ketchup and bitten during her first dinner with the Kid, she kept coming back. She liked him. I liked her. Sometimes, she even deigned to share my bed.
“What did I hear you say?”
I turned the music off. Skeli’s only imperfection was her taste in music, which tended to run toward Faith Hill and Dwight Yoakam. “I’m practicing my Spanish, so I can tell Carolina not to bleach the Kid’s sheets.”
“And you need to call her your ‘sweet potato’ to get her to understand?”
“I’ll do whatever it takes, Skeli,” I said. Skeli—a Greek pun on “legs.” My nickname for her.
“Martyr. So answer my question. How did it go?”
“I’m hired. It’s a treasure hunt. The old man misplaced some of the money he stole, and the family wants me to find it.”
“Will you?”
“For five grand a day and a performance bonus, I will try really, really hard.”
“When do you start?”
“Tomorrow. As soon as they send over the documents I need.”
“You have a date tomorrow.” As in, you have a date tomorrow, and don’t forget!
Skeli was graduating from a three-year doctoral program in physical therapy from Columbia University. I was not going to miss it.
“I will be there. They’d have to pay me at least ten grand before I’d skip that ceremony.”
“You’d skip my graduation for ten thousand dollars?”
“Wouldn’t you?” I said, still thinking we were both having fun.
“Actually, no.” She let me squirm for a moment before continuing. “But if you get an offer up around fifty, take two and I’ll go with you.”
For once I let wisdom win out over exercising my sometimes lame sense of humor. “Forgive me for making a bad joke. I will be there without fail.”
“And one request? I know you’d like to buy me flowers. Everybody there will be getting flowers. But just for me? No flowers. Okay? Promise?”
Skeli associated bouquets of flowers with her ex-husband’s repeated infidelities. Someday, I vowed, I would cure her of this affliction and cover her in rose petals.
“How about a potted palm?”
She chuckled. “How about a buzzed begonia?”
“A looped lily?”
“Bad. A schnockered nasturtium?”
“Say that three times fast.”
She did.
“You win. Are you coming over?”
She gave a sigh. “You know the Kid hates it when I’m there in the morning.”
“No, he just never sees me smile in the morning, except when you’re here. It confuses him.”
“And if I leave before you get him up, it’s like I’m sneaking out. That panties-in-the-pocket feeling. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a lady.”
“I’ve noticed. That’s why I want you to come over.”
“See you tomorrow. Pick me up at two? We’ll walk up together.”
“Dulces sueños, mia batata,” I said.
“Oh, god. Carolina’s going to bust a gut. Have you ever heard yourself speak Spanish? You make it sound almost Russian. See you at two.”
And she was gone. But so was the blue cloud of guilt that had been pressing me down into the chair. I got up and went to bed.
The phone rang again fifteen minutes later. I had just dropped off.
“Change your mind?” A man is essentially an optimist where his libido is concerned.
“Jason?”
It was Angie. My ex. All libidinous thoughts vanished.
“The Kid’s asleep, Angie. As a matter of fact, so was I. What do you want?”
“It’s nice to hear your voice, too,” she said.
“Sorry.” I pulled myself together and fought the impulse to check to see that my wallet was on the end table. My money tended to disappear around Angie. “How are you? How’s your mother? Tino?” I could do polite when challenged.
“Thank you. All just fine, thank you. I am calling to talk to you, not my son.”
“My son”—this was about territory, possession. I discovered that I had a headache. Five seconds earlier, I did not have a headache.
“Angie,” I said with a resigned sigh. “It’s late. Is this an emergency? Can’t we do this during normal hours?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Tomorrow? Midday?”
She ignored me. “I am coming to New York. Mamma and Tino are coming, too.” Her brother. “I will spend some time with my son. Reconnecting. And I want to see you. There are things that need to be said. Things that need to be set right. I need you to hear me out. You owe me that much.”
When I went to prison, Angie and I had worked out a plan. We got a divorce, and I transferred half my assets over to her—the Feds and my lawyers took the rest. The second half of the plan was that we would reunite once I was out. Instead, Angie had taken off for home—Beauville, Louisiana—taking our boy and the money. When things got hard, she dumped the Kid and kept the money. Then it got worse. A lot worse. I really didn’t think I owed her a damn thing.
“Great. You know where to find us. When are you planning this for? No one but German tourists comes to New York in summer, but don’t wait for Thanksgiving. I won’t be able to get your mother good theater tickets, and the Kid absolutely hated the parade last year. Total meltdown when the Captain America balloon crashed into the Ethical Culture building.” I was babbling. If I kept talking long enough, maybe she would just hang up and never come to New York.
“I’ve sublet an apartment for next month on Central Park West. Tino will call you with our flights.”
“Next month?”
“Well, next week, actually. They let us have the place a little early.”
“Angie. Next week? I’m working. The Kid has school. We can’t just drop everything and—”
“We will work around all that,” she interrupted. “I do not need your permission to see my son or to come to New York.”
Technically, this was true. She had signed over sole custody to me six months earlier, and we had verbally agreed that she should keep her distance until the Kid rebounded from the treatment he had received while in her care. But if I tried to keep her away, she might easily demand a court review. I did not trust the courts to judge what was best for my son.
It was late. My head was splitting. “This is not what we agreed.” I had a headache. When I was trading I never got headaches. Then, when I began the fraud that eventually brought me down, I had them all the time. But from the time I heard my sentence in court, through two years of incarceration, followed by eight months of learning to live with and love a very difficult boy, I could count on one hand the number of times that I had suffered a headache. I had one now.
She heard my unspoken acquiescence. “Oh, now, don’t go all nerval on me, Jason. I am a changed person. I have turned my life over to a higher authority. I think I will surprise you.”
Angie was always full of surprises.
“The Kid does not do high drama well, Angie. I’m going to set some boundaries, and I expect you to respect them.”
“You make it sound so warm and inviting.”
“No joke, Angie.”
“I’ll have Tino call you.”
I got up, swallowed three ibuprofen, and sank back into my chair, staring down at Broadway.