David Fleming - The Saturday Boy

Then I pictured him without his helmet on and instead of jeeps in the background I imagined our backyard and the way it looked when he held me by the wrists and swung me around until my feet came off the ground and I couldn’t hear anything but the roar of the wind and the sound of my own laughter.

“Mom! Mom! Come quick,” I shouted, jumping up and banging both knees on the table. The remote fell from my hand and struck the table in such a way that the batteries came flying out. “Dad’s on TV! I think he won the war!”

I was so excited to see my father I’d forgotten I was the only one in the house but I didn’t have time to feel embarrassed. I didn’t have time to put the batteries back in the remote either so I scrambled over the table and launched myself at the television, flipping open the control panel and searching like crazy for the volume button.

The news people were talking about my dad and I was missing it. I tried to read their lips while I stabbed blindly for the volume button with my finger. I was pretty sure they’d just said my dad had not only won the war all by himself but he had also saved the president and they couldn’t say it on TV if it wasn’t true.

I could feel my smile bumping up against the boundaries of my face, pushing against them, threatening to break through. Maybe Dad could come home now. Maybe it could be for good this time. I found the volume button, pressed it, and held it down. It was easier to read lips with the sound turned up. They weren’t talking about the president after all.

When my mom came home I was still sitting there. A minute could have passed. Or a day. Or a week. At some point she must have pulled into the driveway but I hadn’t heard it. The storm door must have banged when she’d come inside but I hadn’t heard that either. I almost hadn’t heard her put the groceries down or call my name—once in anger when she saw I was watching TV and another time in sadness when she saw what I was watching. She came to me quickly and scooped me into her lap, putting herself between me and the television.

“Oh no,” she said. “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.”

And she kept saying it, too, until the words just came together and weren’t really words anymore. I don’t think she even stopped to breathe. My face was pressed into her neck and when I lifted up my head I was looking at the world through the auburn curtain of her hair. On TV a girl in a raincoat with an umbrella and a microphone was standing in front of our house looking wet and serious.

“Mom?”

“Yes, baby?”

“Our house is on TV.”

“I know.”

“Why is our house on TV?”

“Because they’re vultures!” spat Aunt Josie, storming into the room and stabbing the television off with her finger. The telephone rang and Aunt Josie stomped off to get it. I overheard her say a few words I probably shouldn’t have. Mom was sobbing now and it was hard to tell who was holding who anymore.

I could see myself reflected in the blank TV screen—my small, white face peeking over my mom’s shoulder and my hands clasped around her neck. Even in the reflection you could tell she was shaking.

Words floated in my head—words the news people had said—words I knew the meaning of but wished I didn’t. Words like “missing” and “body.” There were others, too, like “rocket.”

And “dead.”

I let go of Mom and stood up and found the batteries and put them back in the remote. Then I sat on the couch, pointed it at the television, and pressed the power button. The news came back on. My dad’s picture was back in the corner. The news people were talking about him.

“Derek, don’t,” Mom said. Her voice was tiny and weak and for some reason I thought of baby birds, alone and blind and helpless. “I don’t want you to hear—”

“I want to watch cartoons.”

Mom was still kneeling on the floor in front of the television. Her shoulders were slumped and her head was down.

“Derek, I—”

“Cartoons.”

She straightened up a little and turned, pulling her hair out of her face with her fingers and putting it behind her ears. Her cheeks were wet and her bottom lip was bleeding. She must have bitten it. Some hair fell back in her face but this time she didn’t move it.

“I meant to—I didn’t know how—”

“ Cartoons! ” I exploded, screaming so loud I hurt my neck. “ Cartoons, cartoons, cartoons! ”

Mom jumped and in the kitchen Josie dropped something. It broke. I could tell by the sound. Mom took the remote from me and entered the code to unlock the kid channels. I sat on the couch with my arms folded and my chin all down into my chest like I was a turtle hiding in its shell.

The Adventure Kids channel was on and some kid in one of those safari helmets was letting a big tarantula walk up his arm. It was orange and black and moved slowly, its two front legs feeling the air. The kid was saying how its legs were covered in these tiny hairs and how they itched and tickled him at the same time.

Mom still knelt in front of the television and the way she was kneeling made me think of a marionette with the strings cut. If you put a lamp on her head she’d be a table. I laughed at that. I couldn’t help it. On TV the tarantula was now on the kid’s face. I laughed at that, too. I probably would have kept on laughing forever if I hadn’t suddenly thrown up all over the table.

WE DIDN’T EAT DINNERthat night. Nobody thought to make it and I didn’t think any of us were hungry anyway. Mom went from kneeling in the living room to sitting in the kitchen. The phone rang a lot and after a while Aunt Josie stopped answering it. I think she may have gotten tired of me asking her who it was.

“It’s people who heard about your dad calling to say how sorry they are,” she said.

“Why are they sorry?” I asked. “They didn’t do it.”

“It’s called sympathy, Derek,” she said. “They feel bad for us because we lost your dad.”

“But we didn’t lose Dad,” I said.

“Oh, Derek.” Aunt Josie blinked a few times fast. If she was trying to hold back tears it didn’t work. “You do know he’s… gone. You understand what that means, right?”

“Yeah, but he’s not lost.”

“Derek, sweetheart, yes he is.”

“No, he’s not. He was lost,” I said. “But then they found him. He was in a cave.”

“That’s different.”

“No it’s not. Lost is when you don’t know where something is. We know where Dad is. So he’s not lost.”

Aunt Josie sat back in her chair and wiped the tears from her eyes with her fingers. Mom cleared her throat and spoke. Her voice was soft but even.

“Isn’t your show on now, Piggy?”

“What show?”

“With the special episode? Zeroguy ?”

“You mean Zeroman ?”

“That’s it.”

“Aren’t I still punished?”

“You’ve been punished enough.”

Her face was pale in the kitchen light. Except for her eyes, which were red with dark circles underneath. She started to smile but stopped. Maybe she realized it was stupid to smile and pretend everything was okay when we both knew it wasn’t.

“Why don’t you go to the living room and watch your show, okay?”

“Can I just go to my room instead?”

“Of course you can but I thought—I mean, you’ve waited so long to watch your show.”

“I know. It’ll be on again though.”

I didn’t want to look at my mom so I looked at my hands instead. They were sort of dirty. My pen had leaked at school today and there was a big blue ink smudge on my finger, and out of my ten fingernails, six needed cutting.