Rafael Yglesias - Fearless

“I don’t think that’s fair—” Peter Hummel began sternly to Nan.

“We’re going to have to talk about this,” his wife was saying at him.

“I need it!” Byron protested to his mother.

Debby, perhaps thinking all this confusion would distract Jake, finally got her courage up, dipped the napkin in a water glass and stabbed at his snotty mustache.

Jake screamed. A piercing howl of innocence violated.

Shocked, Debby backed away. But without the napkin. It stayed behind stuck to Jake’s upper lip, adhered by his natural glue. Jake batted at it wildly with the backs of his hands, but the napkin didn’t come off. His brother Sam laughed so hard he fell sideways onto Jonah. Jonah also convulsed, bits of food appearing at his lips, coughed up by laughter.

“Enough!” Max roared. He stood and reached across the table, pulling the napkin off Jake. A line of snot floated in the air for a moment and then fell gracefully into the serving bowl of cranberry sauce. Sam and Jonah both stared, mouths open, and then fell again into each other’s arms laughing with open mouths, showing their odd teeth. “Go play video games!” Max shouted at them as if he were Moses ordering his people across the Red Sea. Their laughter stopped and they hopped out of their chairs, scrambling on all fours in their hurry to escape.

“Max!” Debby protested.

“That’s what they want to do. For God’s sake, at least somebody is made happy by something. Let them do it in peace and without shame! Without all this goddamn shame!” Max shut his eyes and took a long breath.

He heard but could not see Nan as she said in a bored throaty voice: “We’re not talking about jerking off, Max. I don’t think they’ll become traumatized adults if we embarrass them about playing Gameboy .”

That opened Max’s eyes. What he saw was clouded. His vision was blurred by something floating on his eyes. It muddied the faces of all but Byron. The boy’s head was up, his eyes were shining, and he showed off a grin of awareness.

“Nan, please!” Debby said. “What a mouth you’ve got tonight.”

Max blinked hard and that cleared his sight. Peter and Harry seemed to have retreated into their chests. They had the false self-absorbed looks of passengers on a subway car pretending not to notice the approach of an armed gang.

“Listen, honey,” Nan said. She dropped her fork onto her plate and it clattered loudly — a harsh cue warning of an attack.

“Take it easy, Nan,” Max’s sister Kate mumbled across the table.

“I am so sick and tired of you and Max taking over with my kids! Who the fuck do you think you are! If you spent less time wiping my baby’s nose and more time kicking your nutty husband in the ass to testify to the truth! To the truth, for God’s sake! So that we can get what we deserve for what—” Nan stopped. Her eyes narrowed. She swallowed hard. In a minute she would be crying. That was her pattern — when making demands Nan traveled from rage to tears.

It was time, Max decided. “Excuse me,” he said. He moved away from the table, turned and left the dining room.

Byron called, “Wait for me.”

Max went down the hallway toward the bedrooms seeking Jonah. In case he lost the gamble this time, he wanted to say goodbye. He was only halfway there when Byron bumped at his side.

“Hi.”

Max didn’t answer. He would have to get rid of him. They passed the living room entrance and turned down another hall leading to Debby’s old room where the boys would be playing.

“I know what jerking off means,” Byron said.

“Un huh.” Another turn past a bathroom and they were there. The door was shut.

“It means playing with yourself,” Byron said.

“That’s right,” Max said. He knocked.

“Come in,” Jonah said.

Max opened the door and pushed Byron in. “I want the three of you to play together. I have to go out for a little while.”

“Okay,” Jonah said unenthusiastically.

Byron fought against Max’s hands to leave with him. “I don’t want to. I don’t like video games.”

“That is sick,” Sam said. He was playing his portable game: head down, fingers dancing, feet shifting weight in time with imagined combat.

“Shut up,” Jonah said in a friendly tone and touched his friend gently on the back of his head as if mocking a punishment.

“Go and play,” Max shoved Byron in and then pointed his finger like a scold.

“Okay,” Byron said. He was suddenly dignified. He stepped back from Max and entered the room, his high bright cheeks shining, his small eyes unblinking and bold. He stopped and faced Max. “But I want to know one thing. Dad says now that you’ve closed your office I can’t visit you after school. Why can’t I come to your apartment? I could even walk from school to your apartment. It’s only eleven blocks. My friend Timmy walks home and that’s nine blocks—”

Byron was willing and more than able to argue this point at length. Max cut him off. “We’ll figure something out. I have to go.” Max entered the room and hurried up to Jonah. His son shied away at his approach, with a touch of fear that hurt Max’s feelings. He caught Jonah by the shoulder and pulled him close for a hug. He bent down — he didn’t have to go very far down anymore — and whispered, “I love you. Take care of yourself.”

Jonah was already pulling away, squirming low and out of Max’s embrace. “Okay—” he grumbled.

“Bye,” he said to Sam. His dead partner’s son was still curved into the small video screen, his body jerking in alliance with his arcade alter ego.

Max left, going past Byron quickly, waving.

“Promise?” Byron said to him.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said and left, shutting the door fast behind him. He didn’t continue down the hall. Leaning his back against the door, Max consciously breathed steadily, to recover from the worry of his goodbye.

“What game are you playing?” he heard Byron ask.

It took a while before there was a response. Jonah finally said in a sullen grudging way: “It’s Boxxil . And you’re not very good at it,” he continued, presumably to Sam.

“Well, how can I concentrate with all these interruptions?” Sam whined, a childish pronunciation of his dead father’s favorite rationalization.

“I’m not good at any video games,” Byron said.

Max pushed off from the door, ready to leave for good, satisfied the boys had made some sort of truce.

“Nobody’s good at them at first,” Jonah said. “You have to play them a lot before you get good.”

“Ah!” Sam groaned. The game played a dirge. “Except for me. The more I play, the more terrible I am.”

“You want a turn?” Jonah asked Byron.

Max was about to go. He waited, however, gratified by his son’s civility and curious about Byron’s response. “No,” Byron answered. “They’re boring. It’s not like Architron. You have to use your brain and your imagination to do Architron.”

“Well,” Sam drawled. “What’s so great about it? You can draw buildings in colors. Wow! That’s really great!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jonah said, laughing. “Haven’t you ever heard of crayons!”

“You’re both stupid,” Byron said in a low confident voice.

“Well, stupid me is going to play,” Jonah said.

There was silence. Max said to himself: Go. It’s time. You already know everything there is to know about their lives. You know the sad broken adults they’ll become; you know how they will fail.

He heard the game’s tinny music.

“Your dad thinks playing computer games is stupid,” Byron said. “He didn’t even like me playing computer chess. What he likes is architecture, that’s why he’s so interested in my designs.”