Michael Thomas: Man Gone Down

I know I’m not doing well. I have an emotional relationship with a fish — Thomas Strawberry. My oldest son, C, named him, and that name was given weight because a six-year-old voiced it as though he’d had an epiphany: “He looks like a strawberry.” The three adults in the room had nodded in agreement.

“ I only gave you one,” his godfather, Jack, the marine biologist, told him. “If you have more than one, they kill each other.” Jack laughed. He doesn’t have kids. He doesn’t know that one’s not supposed to speak of death in front of them and cackle. One speaks of death in hushed, sober tones — the way one speaks of alcoholism, race, or secret bubble gum a younger sibling can’t have. Jack figured it out on some level from the way both C and X looked at him blankly and then stared into the small aquarium, perhaps envisioning a battle royal between a bowlful of savage little fish, or the empty space left behind. We left the boys in their bedroom and took the baby with us. “They don’t live very long,” he whispered to us. “About six weeks.” That was C’s birthday in February. It’s August, and he’s not dead.

He’s with me on the desk, next to my stack of books and legal pads. I left my laptop at my mother-in-law’s for C to use. She’d raised an eyebrow as I started to the door. Allegedly, my magnum opus was on that hard drive — the book that would launch my career and provide me with the financial independence she desired. “ I write better if the first draft is longhand.” She hadn’t believed me. It had been a Christmas gift from Claire. I remember opening it and being genuinely surprised. All three children had stopped to see what was in the box.

“Merry Christmas, honey,” she’d cooed in my ear. She then took me by the chin and gently turned my face to meet hers. “This is your year.” She kissed me — too long — and the children, in unison, looked away. The computer was sleek and gray and brimming with the potential to organize my thoughts, my work, my time. It would help extract that last portion of whatever it was that I was working on and buff it with the requisite polish to make it salable. “This is our year.” Her eyes looked glazed, as though she had been intoxicated by the machine’s power, the early hour, and the spirit of the season. It had been bought, I was sure, with her mother’s money. And I knew Edith had never believed me to have any literary talent, but she’d wanted to make her daughter feel supported and loved — although she probably had expected it to end like this. C had seemed happy when I left, though, sitting on the floor with his legs stretched under the coffee table, the glow from the screen washing out his copper skin.

“Bye, C.”

“By-ye.” He’d made it two syllables. He hadn’t looked up.

Marco walks up the stairs and stops outside his kid’s study, where I’m working. He knocks on the door. I don’t know whether to be thankful or annoyed, but the door’s open and it’s his house. I try to be as friendly as I can.

“Yo!”

“Yo! What’s up?” He walks in. I turn halfway and throw him a wave. He comes to the desk and looks down at the stack of legal pads.

“Damn, you’re cranking it out, man.”

“I’m writing for my life.” He laughs. I don’t. I wonder if he notices.

“Is it a novel?”

I can’t explain to him that three pads are one novel and seven are another, but what I’m working on is a short story. I can’t tell him that each hour I have what I believe to be an epiphany, and I must begin again — thinking about my life.

“Want to eat something?”

“No thanks, man, I have to finish this part.”

I turn around on the stool. I’m being rude. He’s moved back to the doorway, leaning. His tie’s loose. He holds his leather bag in one hand and a fresh beer in the other. He’s dark haired, olive skinned, and long nosed. He’s five-ten and in weekend racquetball shape. He stands there, framed by a clear, solid maple jamb. Next to him is more mill-work — a solid maple bookcase, wonderfully spare, with books and photos and his son’s trophies. There’s a picture of his boy with C. They were on the same peewee soccer team. They’re grinning, holding trophies in front of what I believe to be my leg. Marco clinks his wedding band on the bottle. I stare at him. I’ve forgotten what we were talking about. I hope he’ll pick me up.

“Want me to bring you something back?”

“No, man. Thanks, I’m good.”

I’m broke, but I can’t tell him this because while his family’s away on Long Island for the summer, I’m sleeping in his kid’s bed and he earns daily what I, at my best, earn in a month, because he has a beautiful home, because in spite of all this, I like him. I believe he’s a decent man.

“All right, man.” He goes to take a sip, then stops. He’s probably learned of my drinking problem through the neighborhood gossip channels, but he’s never confirmed any of it with me.

“Call me on the cell if you change your mind.”

He leaves. In the margins, I tally our monthly costs. “We need to make $140,000 a year,” Claire told me last week. I compute that I’ll have to teach twenty-two freshman comp sections a semester as well as pick up full-time work as a carpenter. Thomas Strawberry swims across his bowl to face me.

“I fed you,” I say to him as though he’s my dog. He floats, puckering his fish lips. Thomas, at one time, had the whole family copying his pucker face, but the boys got tired of it. The little one, my girl, kept doing it — the fish, the only animal she’d recognize. “What does the cow say?” I’d ask. “ What does the cat say?” She’d stare at me, blankly, giving me the deadeye that only children can give — a glimpse of her indecipherable consciousness. “ What does the fish say?” She’d pucker, the same way as when I’d ask her for a kiss — the fish face and a forehead to the cheekbone.

I packed my wife and kids into my mother-in-law’s enormous Mercedes Benz at 7:45 p.m. on Friday, June 26. It was essential for both Claire and her mother to leave Brooklyn by eight with the kids fed and washed and ready for sleep for the three-and-a-half-hour drive to Massachusetts. Claire, I suppose, had learned the trick of planning long drives around sleeping schedules from her mother. Road trips required careful planning and the exact execution of those plans. I’d have to park in the bus stop on Atlantic Avenue in front of our building then run the bags, toys, books, and snacks down the stairs, trying to beat the thieves and meter maids. Then I’d signal for Claire to bring the kids down, and we’d strap them into their seats, equipping them with juice and crackers and their special toys. Then, in her mind, she’d make one last sweep of the house, while I’d calculate the cost of purchasing whatever toiletries I knew I’d left behind.

After the last bathroom check and the last seatbelt check, we’d be off. We’d sing. We’d tell stories. We’d play I Spy. Then one kid would drop off and we’d shush the other two until Jersey or Connecticut and continue to shush until the last one dropped. There’s something about children sleeping in cars, perhaps something felt by parents, and perhaps only by the parents of multiple children — their heads tilted, their mouths open, eyes closed. The stillness and the quiet that had vanished from your life returns, but you must be quiet — respect their stillness, their silence. You must also make the most of it. It’s when you speak about important things that you don’t want them to hear: money, time, death — we’d almost whisper. We’d honor their breath, their silence, knowing that their faces would be changed each time they awoke, one nap older, that less easily lulled to sleep. Before we had children, we joked, we played music loud, we talked about a future with children.