Michael Chabon - Werewolves in Their Youth

“Don’t think I won’t.”

“Would he just die?”

“With any luck.”

“Especially the monkey,” Emily said thoughtfully.

Ruby punched her on the arm. “Goddamn it, Mom, you know it’s a fuckin’ Sasquatch.”

“A Sasquatch is not that skinny.” Emily turned to Green. “What is it with this tattoo shit, Marty? Can you explain this phenomenon?”

“Well,” Green said. He could feel the weak grin guttering on his lips. He knew what Freud had said about tattooing, of course, and he had his own private theory that people who tattooed themselves, particularly the young men and women one saw doing it today, were practicing a kind of desperate act of self-assertion through legerdemain, holding a candle to a phrase written in invisible ink, raising letters and lines where before there had been only the blankest sheet of paper. Don’t throw me away, they were saying. I bear a hidden message. “It’s difficult to say.”

“I hope you don’t have one.”

“Not yet,” said Green. “Ha-ha.” He struggled to relax, to regain his therapeutic cool, to pick up the scattered index cards on which he had jotted down all his notes about who he was. Green was an excellent therapist, kindly but distant, supportive but ineluctable, deferential yet sure of himself, solitary but self-sufficient. None of these qualities had stood him in any good stead during the three years of his marriage to Caryn or given him the faintest clue of how to connect to his daughter, that wild, random compound of Caryn and him that they had, in their fantastic ignorance, set to wander loose in the world.

“Daddy,” Jocelyn said. She pointed to the buffet table, spread from end to end with a motley assortment of barbecue favorites, vegetarian fare, and polychrome latex-based snacks. She seemed to be indicating a pile of Toll House cookies. “What are those?”

She twisted herself in his arms, trying to get free. Again Green gripped her tightly. He could not rid himself of the erroneous sensation that this was the house in which, sometime around his twelfth birthday, something crucial inside of him had broken, never to be repaired. He was afraid to put Jocelyn down here, to let her wander its rooms alone.

“What are what, honey?” he said.

“Those. Those round brown things.”

“What things?”

“Those things that look like chocolate-chip cookies.”

“Those are chocolate-chip cookies.”

“Can I have one?”

“Yes, you may.”

“Can I get down?”

Green looked at her. What difference did it make whether he said yes to her or no? In forty-eight hours, she would slip across the border, into another jurisdiction, where his laws and statutes did not apply.

“Yes,” he said, “you may.”

He put her down, and she ran over to the table and reached for the cookie, rising up onto the balls of her feet.

“What a sweetheart,” said Ruby.

“Thank you,” said Green. “Now, tell me, which one of these boys is Seth?”

Emily turned to scan the room. “Which one of these boys is Seth? You tell me. I’m serious. I mean,” she said, “look at these kids. I swear, I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup, which isn’t too far-fetched, I’m afraid. Just look at them. Look at this one.” She slapped a young man on the back of his stubbly head as he passed. He grinned at her. “I tell Seth he looks like a penis, with his bald head and his pants all sagging down around his ankles like a big scrotum. It’s a room full of penises. Then again, I suppose that’s always true, isn’t it? Even when they’re wearing suits and ties.”

The screen door banged. Ruby jumped.

“Every time I walk into this house,” said the man who came in through the door, “someone is saying the word penis. I don’t know why that is.”

Harvey Klein was a small, solid, almost top-heavy man, jut-jawed and broad-shouldered. He wore a knit short-sleeve polo shirt of soft summer-weight wool, gray with black flecks, and tight black jeans, creased down the front like a pair of suit pants. His brushed-aluminum hair was cut short, except at the very back, where he wore it pulled into a neat little pigtail. His sunglasses hung on a cord around his neck. A few thick silver hairs curled up through the open collar of his shirt. He stood in the doorway, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.

“You’ve never been in this house before,” said Emily.

“But I’m certain I’m right nonetheless.”

“Harvey.”

“Em.”

They embraced. Green could see him taking stock of her, palpating her bones with his long, sentient fingers. He looked at least fifteen years younger than his ex-wife, though Green suspected that they were exactly the same age.

“This is your daughter,” Emily said, pulling away. “In case you don’t recognize her.”

“She’s hard to miss,” said Dr. Klein.

“Penis,” said Ruby. “Penis, penis, penis.”

He spread his arms wide, waiting for her to step into them. She set her hands on her hips and gave him a look, through lowered lids, face half-averted, lips pursed, mulling him over. She kept him waiting a long time, long enough for Green to wonder if she hated her father enough to leave him hanging there like a fool with his hands in the air. The expression on Dr. Klein’s face didn’t waver. He stood there, smiling like a man who had just come home from the track, up a couple of grand, to take everyone out for steaks and dancing. And, at the last possible moment, Ruby threw herself into his arms. Her feet kicked into the air, and she swung from his neck, tethered to him at one end, dangling loose at the other. She murmured something in her father’s ear. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply the smell of her hair. Green understood, though he could not have said quite how, that there had never been any other possible outcome.

“Yo, Duncan,” said one of the big boys elbowing one another in the living room. “Go tell Feeb his dad’s here.”

Dr. Klein unhooked Ruby’s hands from the back of his neck and restored her spindly bootheels to the terrazzo floor of the living room. He was looking around her now, past her, studying the room, taking in its motley population and random furnishings — some of which must have chimed dimly in his memory — with the remote but friendly air of a busy doctor, a study that eventually led him to Green. He looked puzzled. Then he turned back to Ruby and took hold of her chin with the fingers of one hand. He switched her face from side to side. “Christ, what is all this shit, Ruby Ellen? You look like a goddamn charm bracelet.” He let go of her chin, and her face seemed to hang there a moment, in midair, as if suspended on the lingering tension of his regard. Dr. Klein returned his pleasant, clinical gaze to Green. “You look like a hurricane fence.” He winked at Green and held out his hand. “Harvey Klein.”

“Martin Green. I, uh, I used to baby-sit Ruby.”

“Martin Green. Your mother was Carol, sure, sure. I remember her. Baby-sit. Hard to believe that”—he nodded toward Ruby, winking again—“was ever a baby. Isn’t it?”

“Never have children, Mr. Green. They’ll break your heart.”

Ruby simulated the sound of vomiting.

“Ruby,” said Emily, “isn’t there something you wanted to show your father?”

Ruby blushed. “Maybe later,” she said. “Shut up, Mom.”

“Now,” said Dr. Klein, “where is my son?”

“Where is my daughter?” said Green.

Jocelyn was no longer standing by the buffet table. Green craned his head to get a better look. An elderly uncle of Emily’s and one of the ersatz hoodlums were engaged in a transgenerational analysis of the Planet of the Apes series of films, while at the same time, armed with a couple of plastic forks, they made their way through the remnants of a macaroni casserole. The only other occupants of the buffet line were great black flies. Green called out to the two men, over the heads of several intervening partygoers. “Have you seen my little girl?” The men shook their heads and went back to their conversation. “Excuse me,” Green said to Dr. Klein. “I seem to have lost my child.”