Jess Walter - The Zero

“Well.” Edgar took a deep breath. “Let me start by saying that I appreciate your concern.” He smiled warmly at Remy. “Obviously, I know my father’s not dead. I’m not delusional, and I certainly don’t wish he were dead.” He cocked his head. “I haven’t told anyone that he’s dead. I simply haven’t corrected that impression.”

He shrugged as if that covered it, but when no one said anything, Edgar laughed impatiently. “Look. What if I’d written a story for a class about a boy who lost his father? We’d be talking about my A paper, instead of everyone looking at me like I’m sick.” Edgar laughed again, as if this cleared it all up.

Remy couldn’t think of a single word to say.

Carla spoke up. “But Edgar, honey. This isn’t a story you wrote. This is something you’re allowing your classmates to believe. Your homeroom teacher said that you sit at your desk crying. She said you got out of a physics test and that you’ve stopped going to PE altogether.”

“Yeah…”

“Well, I guess I don’t understand.”

Edgar shrugged as if it were the simplest thing. “If I had lost my father, would you really expect me to take a test? Or to play Frisbee golf?”

“Well… no. I guess not.”

“Okay,” Edgar said, as if that solved it.

Carla shifted on the couch, so that she was facing their son. She broke out her gentle relationship voice, the one Remy recalled from the awful counseling sessions they tried before the split. “Honey, is it that you don’t get to see your father enough? Is that what this is about?”

Edgar cocked his head.

“That he works too much, sweetie? That he’s gone all the time.”

“No.”

“Is it his drinking? Are you trying to tell your father that his lifestyle is going to kill him? Is this a kind of metaphoric death you’ve created for him? Is that what you’re trying to tell us, honey?”

Remy wondered how far this line of questioning would go. Maybe this was about the time he flirted with that waitress in front of Carla. Or maybe it was about the fact that he didn’t like her family. The way he used to drop his dirty clothes next to the bed?

Steve leaned forward helpfully. “Is it to impress chicks, Eddie? Is that what you’re doing, ol’ buddy? Trying to get a little sympathy ass?”

“No, Steve,” Edgar said patiently. “I’m not trying to get… ass.”

Remy wished he could infuse his own voice with as much flatness when he spoke to Carla’s new husband, that he could speak so ironically with such an apparent lack of irony. Suddenly, his pride for his child overwhelmed him, and Remy flashed on the idea that if he actually had died, he might save Edgar this awkward questioning.

“Well, I think we deserve an explanation,” Carla said. “That’s all.”

The boy looked around the room for help. When Edgar was little, Remy used to find solace in the shards of himself that he saw in the boy’s in-trouble stare, in his shrugs and shifts, in the things he feared. But now Edgar was so self-assured that Remy could barely remember why his son had ever needed whatever shelter he’d once provided. Edgar was a stranger to him, an alien with long, blocky hair and sinewy arms and a clipped, hyper-intellectual way of speaking that made it seem as if he were reading.

“Okay,” his son said. “First of all, by agreeing to talk about this, I want you to know that I’m not apologizing. This is entirely my business.” Edgar took a deep breath and stared at the carpet. “Grieving is personal.”

“That’s fine, Edgar, honey. But what are you grieving? The divorce? Your father’s inability to commit emotionally-”

Remy interrupted: “You know, I think we’ve covered that.”

“I’m grieving my dead father!” Edgar was losing his patience. “I don’t know why that’s so hard to understand.”

“But… your father isn’t dead, honey.”

“I know that.” Edgar rubbed his temples, as if talking to these morons was more than he could bear. “Weren’t there fathers who died that day?”

“Of course they did.”

“And didn’t they leave children behind?”

“Sure.”

“And didn’t I have a father?”

“Yes. Of course.”

He put his arms out as if finishing a magic trick. “Then why is it so hard to believe that I could be grieving the same thing as those other children? I suppose you’d rather I behave like everyone else and grieve generally . Well, I’m sorry. I’m not built that way. General grief is a lie. What are people in Wyoming really grieving? A loss of safety? Some shattered illusion that a lifetime of purchases and television programs had meaning? The emptiness of their Palm Pilots and SUVs and baggy jeans? Look around, Mom. Generalized grief is a fleeting emotion, like lust. It’s a trend, just some weak shared moment in the culture, like the final episode of some TV show everybody watches. It’s weightless. You wake up the next day and wonder when the next disaster is scheduled.

“But real grief… oh, God.” He cocked his head and stared at his mother. “Real grief weighs on you like you can’t imagine. The death of a father… is the most profound thing I’ve ever experienced.” Edgar’s eyes seemed to be tearing up. “It’s hard to get out of bed. And you want me to take a test? Play softball? Are you kidding? There are times when I can barely breathe. I can’t… get over it. And I don’t want to. The only way to comprehend something like this is to go through it. Otherwise, it’s just a number. Three thousand? Four thousand? How do you grieve a number?”

His voice was a whisper. “So… yes… I have chosen to focus my grief on one individual. On the death of my father.” He shrugged and looked down at the carpet. “And you know, frankly, I guess I expected a little more support from you.”

“I…” Carla looked from Steve to Remy and back. “I…”

Remy squeezed his eyes as tight as they would go, and then opened them again. Still here . Except for Steve, who apparently sensed that the potential for humor had faded, and backed carefully out of the room.

Edgar wasn’t finished. “Ask yourself this: what separates me from some kid whose father actually died that day?”

“The fact that I’m alive?” Remy asked. Even to him, his voice sounded like it was coming from another room.

“Fair enough,” Edgar said, without meeting Remy’s eyes. “Okay, now let’s take that kid, the one who actually lost his father, but is somehow coping by getting consolation from his girlfriend or from drinking or from writing poems. Are you going to tell him he isn’t grieving enough ? Are you gonna tell some poor kid doing his best that he should feel worse about the death of his father?”

“No…” Carla shook her head. “No. Of course not.”

“Then don’t tell me I shouldn’t be devastated by the death of my father just because he isn’t dead! I mean… Goddamn it, Mom. All things considered, I think I’m doing pretty well… Do you know there are kids out there getting high every day? Kids selling drugs. Is that what you want me to do?”

“No, of course not.” Carla started crying; this had always been her deepest fear for her child, that he would use drugs. “We don’t want that. Do we, Brian?”

Remy just stared straight ahead. Honestly, he’d rather have Edgar smoke a little weed and acknowledge that Remy was alive, but he knew better than to say so.

“I’m sorry, honey,” Carla said. “I’m sorry we got divorced and I’m sorry about your father.”

“Thank you.” Edgar straightened the black armband. “Thank you. That means a lot to me. It really does.”