Charles Bock - Beautiful Children

As Lincoln spoke, he was aware of Newell glancing down into the shoe box in his lap, the game cartridges he'd been rummaging through when all this started. He was aware of the boy looking up and turning, searching out his mother and making eye contact. Immediately Lincoln knew she'd visited Newell's room, and while he did not know details of their truce, this glance gave him some idea. We all make compromises, it said. This is part of the agreement. This was almost enough to make him quit. To just junk it all and walk away. If this tale didn't truly deserve to be passed down, he would have given up right there. But damn if he was going to hand them victory, be denied the telling of such an excellent tale. His voice filled with forced goodwill, a hint of temper. “ So what I'd do. I'd drive up and down I-15, where it runs behind the Strip, have the radio tuned to the sports station for the round-by-round updates. The closest parts of the freeway, between the sounds from the grandstands and the blow-by-blow recaps, it was just like being at the fights.”

“What time are our reservations?” Lorraine asked.

“We're fine.”

“I just don't want to be late.”

Newell's head tilted back ever so slightly, the back of his skull making soft impact against the wall behind him.

“I drove around for a while,” Lincoln said, “kind of light-headed. I was so pissed at myself for getting thrown out of there, letting your mom down. I don't remember driving, just that I ended up pulling into the employee lot at work, I think from repetition as much as anything. I had a copy of the Lamaze notes in the glove compartment and was going over them.” He stopped now, became contemplative, the memory apparent to him as if he were looking at it through a thin sheet of gauze. “You know, your mom and I, we really didn't have a lot. She'd given up dancing to have you, and my bonus money had been just enough for the banks to let us go into debt for the house. We were getting by, not much more. We had health insurance but it wasn't going to cover it all, and that was just the beginning. Having a kid, you don't know what you're getting into.”

Memories had him now, back in those moments, possessing him to the point where his affectations were stripped away, and he spoke candidly, honestly; to the point where he did not notice the changing tenor of the living room — his son going bone still, being sucked into the tale against his will, Lorraine coming to the edge of the kitchen, listening silently, her guard lowering enough to find herself occupied by her own memories, and a different tale of how that night went.

“This guy I know, Stromboli, was working the pit and I remember we talked for a while. Guess I was nervous, because Stromboli, and the craps dealer too, and pretty much every single individual around that table heard about the bundle on the way. I mean I blabbed. Getting kicked outta the hospital. The mutant two-headed flipper baby. If worrying made me a bad guy, and about not wanting a flipper baby — shouldn't I love the kid no matter what? This is to a full table, remember. All kinds of action going on. Money's at play. But you know what, every person around that table was pretty sympathetic. Concerned even. Then they wanted your old man to shut the hell up.”

Lincoln chuckled at his own joke; Lorraine interrupted: “You're not wearing that tie.”

“Looks that way.”

“With that jacket?”

He turned away from her voice, away from the reality of a wife who habitually challenged and corrected his sense of style. “Five's the point,” he announced, assuming the barking voice of a croupier. “ ‘The point is five. New shooter here. New shooter coming out.’ I figure what the hell, right? Reach into my pocket. When I open my wallet, the damndest thing — this orange and red piece of confetti, I didn't know what it was. It carries up into the air, sweeps up in the air, just the damndest thing you ever saw, it's a butterfly, fluttering, unsteady above the crap table, right in the middle of all that smoke.”

The smell of his wife's perfume and the weight of her presence were behind him; her arms wrapped around his neck.

“A moth,” Newell said.

“Not many times in your life you honestly come across magic,” Lincoln said. “That was one.”

“I love that story,” Lorraine said.

He looked up, admiring her for a count. She smiled — a bit sadly, he thought, before she broke the moment, straightened something on the adjacent table.

“I took those bones,” Lincoln said, with renewed energy. “Straight off rolled myself a four and a three. Like something from the movies. You couldn't have scripted it any better.” He felt a catch in his throat. “I'm telling you, whatever I needed, I rolled. It was insane. The crowd was cheering. ‘Hot shooter. Make way for the hot shooter.’ ”

“Why'd you have a butterfly in your wallet?” Newell's face betrayed interest, confusion. “I mean, if it's a moth the story makes sense. But a butterfly?”

“What time's your show?” Lorraine asked.

“Um… Seven-fifteen, I think.”

“You'll be home by ten?”

“What if I get hungry and want to get food?”

“You shouldn't get hungry. You had dinner and your dad's giving you money for popcorn and snacks.”

“He hasn't given me anything, yet. ”

“Don't rush me,” Lincoln said, laughing. “I'm still trying to figure out why there was a butterfly in my wallet.”

“Did or did we not agree, Newell?”

“Mom.”

“You get to go out with your friend so long as you agree to be home by ten.”

She did not break, no matter how long he studied her. Finally, if Newell did not exactly nod, the blankness of his face registered understanding, an unhappy acceptance of the terms, but acceptance nonetheless. He said, “Ten a.m. it is.”

“Young man—”

Let them spar, Lincoln figured, let life and its messy details swirl. Rather than getting involved, instead of paying attention, he returned to a March night that did not feel all that long ago, a night when he had stayed at the craps table for five hours, when he'd won enough money to pay off all of his wife's hospital bills, and had continued to win, rolling so well that expecting baby or no expecting baby, the other players had not wanted him to leave the table, those bastards had wanted Lincoln to rattle them bones.

He'd about had to pull himself away, but pull himself away he had. He'd been exhausted and pumped, reeking with nicotine and drenched with sweat, riding on adrenaline and love and whiskey, while still sort of worried about flipper babies, how the delivery would go, which breathing technique went where.

He had told his son this story many times, it was true, overacting each time, stepping into his overblown tough-guy persona, painstakingly going over the details, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, so many times that he knew Newell was sick of the story, so many times that it was not uncommon for the kid to poke holes in his exaggerations, to roll his eyes, report, I'm going into diabetic shock here. Lincoln knew his son had become inured to how much the story meant to him, knew the emotion that the tale drew from him was repellent to his boy. At the same time Lincoln saw his son tempted, struggling with and repulsed by and suffocating with his own connections to the tale. The safe conclusion was that his dad was a big old softie. A lightweight. And maybe it was true. Maybe he was. Because Lincoln could not help himself. His voice breaking, he recalled the assuredness that overtook him that night on his drive back to the hospital.

“The word blessing, ” Lincoln said, “is flowery and unmasculine. I know.”