Sam Lipsyte - The Ask

"He what?"

"He. . ladled his prole."

"Violated his parole."

"That's it. You know, Daddy. You always know."

"Aiden told you this?"

"His mommy cries a lot. Aiden saw Larry's winky, too."

"When did he see Larry's winky?"

"In the kitchen. Aiden got up from a bad dream and went to the kitchen and Larry was drinking juice out of the carton, which you said is bad, but Larry does it."

"It is bad," I said. "It's just really wrong to do that, Bernie."

"Larry does it."

"Larry got violated up to Elmira."

"Did he have to go there because he drank from the carton?"

"Life can be very tough on people," I said.

I hated to travel into Manhattan with Bernie. The boy figured the sidewalks for a snack spread. Old gum, cigarette butts, bottle caps, petrified turds, even the occasional crack vial or broken syringe-Bernie could work it all into his mouth. Of course he could find such ad hoc oral solace on the boulevards of Queens, but the trash seemed less virulent here. It was the home poison.

Still, I had to see Maura. We could surprise her, Bernie and I, maybe drink some lemonade on a bench in Bryant Park. I knew she took her salads there when the weather was good. Sometimes she told amusing stories about the scene, the ongoing mash-up of tourists, homeless drunks, street clowns, construction workers, and office temps reading their papers or calling their friends or playing bocce ball with the bocce ball hustlers.

I'd witnessed some odd things myself, the few times I'd met Maura for lunch or crossed through to the Public Library before getting back to Mediocre. I always seemed to bump into somebody I knew, people from work, old acquaintances. I'd once seen Maurice Gunderson deliver a lecture about the apocalypse to a large group gathered in the outdoor reading area. It was a warm spring day and he looked golden, prophetic, up at the lectern.

When his talk was over I stood in the autograph line with a copy of his book I'd taken from a display table.

He got into an argument with the man in front of me about crop circles. The man had proof they were pranks. Maurice said the pranks and the proof of the pranks were both part of a cover-up. They went on for a while. I was about to slip away when Maurice looked past the man and called me over.

"Sir, what's your feeling about all of this?"

I stood there, beamed, waited for Maurice to recognize me.

"No pressure," said Maurice, looked back to the other man. "Maybe we can continue this at the party."

"Love to," said the man, and I realized that despite the spat the man was a friend and fan of the Gunderson project. Now Maurice held out his hand for my book, to sign it.

"Whom shall I make it out to?" he said. "Or do you just want the signature?"

"Signature's fine," I said.

"A collector," said Gunderson. "Get it through your head. There's no point in collecting anything, except maybe some good karma."

Gunderson grinned and handed the book back, stared past me to the next pilgrim, a tawny teen in a cocktail dress of skimpy hemp.

Now Bernie and I walked hand-in-hand through the park. He did not wriggle, did not bolt, did not eat garbage from the ground. We strode together in perfect sunlight. I loved my family, my life. We passed a urine-scented lawn-sleeper with a swastika on the web of his cracked hand and I loved him, too. I even loved the bespoke-suited tool on his cell phone shouting at somebody about somebody else's promise that he'd be "getting his beak wet." But mostly I just loved my wife and my son. I almost wanted to shout it aloud, but the men I'd known who indulged in such gestures tended to be divorced.

There was maybe an immutable law about that.

But there were also maybe immutable laws about beautiful moods. Here was the love of my life on a shaded bench with her lunchtime greens. What a turkey wrap meant to me, a bowl of arugula and goat cheese meant to Maura. My heart was full of tender wonder. Maura had a noonday luminescence. Beside her sat a handsome man who laughed and kneaded her thigh with a strong tan hand. It was Paul the Animator. I had a moment to decide: gay touch or straight touch? Before I could, Bernie broke from my grasp, galloped at them.

"Paul!" he shouted. "Hi, Paul! Do you have my superhero cartoon?"

A Spandexed man on a unicycle sliced past me.

"Watch it, fatty," he said.

"Fuck you, clown," I snarled.

The man's arm shot back. A spray of daisies sprouted in his fist.

We ate dinner in silence, or near silence, as Bernie, naked, wet from the bath, speared disks of Not Dog with his fork and chuckled knowingly at something he most likely knew nothing about. Maura kept her eyes down, sipped her wine. I pretended to relish my Swedish meatballs, which I'd picked up with some other groceries after leaving Paul and Maura in the park.

It had been nothing but pleasantries among us, but the flustered way they had gathered themselves after Bernie called to them charged our exchange. Paul had tried to excuse himself but Maura insisted he stay. They could walk back to the office together. Lunch hour was over anyway. Why hadn't I called? Maura wanted to know. I told her about Happy Salamander, the defection of the Newts. But why hadn't I called? Paul looked shaken, though still wonderfully tan. He promised Bernie he'd finish his animation soon, led Maura away.

"Paul's my grown-up friend," said Bernie.

"What about me?"

But I'm not sure he heard. He'd already darted away, disappeared into a throng of Russian tourists, then just disappeared.

"Bernie!" I dipped into that familiar parental trot, the one that covers more ground than walking but does not yet reek of pure panic. It's important to smile a lot while you maintain a steady pace and call out your child's name in an almost jovial manner, as though it could be a game, and even if it's not a game, you still aren't worried, it's happened before, though not too often, and besides, it's age appropriate, so you don't consider it an issue requiring therapy or, heaven help us, a pharmaceutical regimen. This is no big deal, the trot and the smile signal, though it sure would be great to locate the little scamp. But hey, the kid gives back a lot of love, and usually you're a bit more in control of the situation, though you understand child-rearing throws its curve-balls, its cutters and sinkers, too, but still, this is nothing compared to the hard work the parents of, for example, Down kids must put in, or even the folks with autistic children, where you're doing all that special needs slogging and not even getting those sloppy Down kisses, no, your kid, he's a regular kid, maybe with some impulse-control deficiencies, or dealies, as you laughingly call them with your wife, or maybe, and you're definitely willing to entertain this notion, especially in this era of so much entitled helicopter coddling, or whatever the term is where the children are literally enfolded in cocoons of helicopters that entitle them to do whatever they want, because of the culture, maybe this very normal, regular, active boy, who happens to live in a social strata that condemns masculine energies in all its children, maybe he just needs to have his coat pulled, to be briefed, as it were, in an energetic masculine way, to be boxed or cuffed or whacked upside some part of him in that no-nonsense, simple folkways folk way (because throttling and such, it's worked for thousands of years, no?), or at least persuaded in a compelling and lasting fashion that it is not okay to just dash off into a throng of Russian (gas-rich, reassembling their rabid empire) tourists and ignore his father's cries, yes, it could be that he needs to be squared away on that score in a more visceral sense, though certainly not in the sense of a spanking or a hiding, such tactics, alas, never work, but anyway that is a separate discussion. Really, right now, you just need to get a visual on the little shit, pronto.