Ben Marcus - Leaving the Sea - Stories

When the work bell sounds, Mather lines up at the service entrance and waits his turn for the security check. The boy tenses in Mather’s arms as they approach the nursery, but when Mather hands him off to the caregiver, the boy does not let himself cry. Even at this age, he is trying to be brave. Mather watches through the high window as the boy is quickly placed on the floor of the playroom, in front of a bucket of blocks. The caregiver disappears into an office, but the boy does not seem to notice. He picks something out of the bucket and puts it in his mouth. Mather gives him a last look, then heads up the ramp to the elevator.

The boy is one and a half years old and his name is Alan Mather, and already he has dense black hair on his head. To Mather, Alan is a name not for a baby but for a grown man. When they were naming him, he had let the boy’s mother choose, thinking that he should pick his battles. She had been so sure about it, and Mather had found that he could not think of a single name that didn’t make him feel uneasy when he said it out loud. Mather has tried to call the boy “honey” instead, and maybe if he keeps doing so it will come to feel more natural. The boy has a quiet, wet cough and pink-rimmed eyes, and he’s already capable of sustained, piercing eye contact that his father can never quite match.

At his lunch hour, Mather takes his thermos and sandwich down to the nursery. The boy is in a crib, but he is not asleep. He has the same little foam object in his hand, and it’s been chewed to shreds. When the boy sees Mather, he starts to cry, but softly, as if he had already cried himself hoarse. The respirator in the nursery hasn’t been turned on, and when Mather checks the log to see if the boy has received his medication, there are no entries for today. The boy has the kind of asthma that keeps his lungs from properly lubricating, so he has to inhale moisture through a mask every four hours or his lungs will start to dry out. It’s not serious, the doctor told Mather, but he should try not to miss a treatment. The director of the nursery seemed to be concealing a smirk when Mather first introduced him to the equipment, as if Mather had simply brought in one of Alan’s favorite toys.

After Mather holds the mask to the boy’s face and the boy obediently inhales the wet air, his little brow wrinkled in concentration, they return to the patch of grass outside. Mather tries to eat while the boy sits in his lap, facing downhill. The boy wants to hold Mather’s sandwich, but when Mather lets him he won’t eat any of it, and when Mather tries to rescue the sandwich the boy squishes it into a ball. Mather isn’t hungry for the sandwich, anyway. When he hasn’t slept well, he wants only a sugared muffin with a Coke. His sandwich is cucumbers with olive spread, between slices of thin, black toast, and it smells like potting soil.

It’s a bright, clear day, and Mather can see all the way down to Rollingwood, the neighborhood where he grew up. He can’t see his old house, but he can see the street where it would be, behind a hooked cul-de-sac of narrow homes. His old elementary school’s clock tower rises out of the trees. The clock stopped at 3:15 a long time ago, and unless you stand beneath the tower you’d think the little hand had fallen off, because it’s perfectly hidden beneath the big hand.

Mather’s son won’t go to school there, because they live far away from Rollingwood now. Mather doesn’t even know where the public schools are in his new neighborhood. It’s not so much a neighborhood as an exit off the freeway, but it’s pretty, in its way, with circular grass parks and housing staggered down the middle. In the spring, it’s one of his favorite parts of town. Something about the absence of trees makes the light seem perfect. It’s hard to imagine that he’ll still be in the same apartment, at the same job, in the same city, when the boy starts kindergarten in a few years. But of course the boy will attend kindergarten wherever his mother is living at the time, so Mather isn’t even sure why he’s thinking about the schools in his neighborhood.

Mather points out landmarks to the boy—the old Rotterman Dam and the shipping depot built of natural black bricks—but the boy doesn’t look. He hangs on Mather’s outstretched arm and tries to swing from it. Mather stands up and swings him around and the boy laughs, but the laugh turns into a whimper, and Mather isn’t sure if the boy is frightened or happy.

After work, they take the bus to the boy’s mother’s apartment, but she isn’t home. She has repeatedly asked Mather to return his key, given to him during friendlier days, but it’s times like this that persuade him to hang on to it. Otherwise he’d be waiting forever on the narrow balcony of her building and the boy would be imperiling himself by trying to squeeze through the bars.

Mather lets himself inside and medicates the boy with the old ventilator in the living room, then looks for something to give him for dinner. There is only a chicken salad, so Mather spreads it on a cutting board and begins chipping it fine. The boy refuses the first spoonful, but Mather leaves the bowl on the coffee table, and after the boy has finished running around the apartment he discovers the mashed chicken and starts to awkwardly feed himself while Mather watches from his chair.

It’s late and dark when the boy’s mother comes home. She’s with her boyfriend, who excuses himself to the bedroom without even taking off his coat. Mather has done his best to accept the boyfriend, has always been cordial and said hello, but the boyfriend won’t look Mather in the eye and never stops to talk.

At these drop-offs, Mather and the boy’s mother, Maureen, do not say much. They confirm the next exchange and discuss Alan’s medication, what he’s eaten, how he’s sleeping. They stick to factual matters and flatten their tone of voice as much as possible, disguising their feelings. But today Maureen says that she needs to talk to him and asks him to sit down.

Mather hides his excitement. Maureen never wants to talk to him. Usually she seems disgusted by his presence, critical of how he fathers the boy, indifferent to anything Mather says that is unrelated to the boy’s care. It is as if she had stored up disappointment that she is determined to show him during the ten minutes they see each other twice a week. So for a moment Mather imagines that Maureen has grown suddenly tender toward him, even with the boyfriend lurking in the bedroom. She misses Mather, maybe, and would like to talk to someone who really knows her. Someone who understands, because they once went through a lot together.

Except that’s not it. Maureen needs a favor. She tells him that she can’t take the boy right now. She’s going away tomorrow.

“Okay,” Mather says carefully, wanting to sound cooperative. He’d love to do her a favor, because she thinks he is selfish. If he shows resistance, she’ll be upset and they’ll have another fight.

“Thanks for understanding,” Maureen says. “I appreciate it.” She gets up as if the discussion is over.

But Mather doesn’t understand. What is she telling him?

“I guess we need to wake up Alan,” Maureen says, and she heads for the curtained-off hallway where Mather put him to sleep in the portable crib.

“Where are you going, can I ask?” Mather says. He’s not sure why he sounds apologetic.

“To Robert’s hometown.”

Robert is the boyfriend. Mather thinks that Robert is lucky to be alone in a dark room right now. Maybe Robert is standing at the door, still wearing his winter coat, listening to them.

“Why can’t you take Alan? It’s your turn. He can’t go with you?”

“No. Alan can’t come.”

“Well, when are you coming back?”