The Best American Short Stories 2014

by Jennifer Egan

  Jack H.’s mother greeted me by name, and I wondered for the millionth time what it is about me that keeps me from remembering the names of people I don’t know well. I’m always afraid I’ll make a mistake, and usually I don’t risk it.

  “I love when I can be here early to watch them.” She was beautifully dressed in a gray silk pencil skirt and heels. I did remember that she worked at Google.

  “I’m usually early.”

  “Oh, you’re lucky,” she said, but not in an unkind way. If she noticed that I was wearing exercise pants and a hooded cotton sweatshirt, she didn’t show it. “I’m taking him to the dentist today. Here he comes.” The teacher opened the door and Jack H. bounded out, a wiry, handsome kid, a little shorter than our Jack. He didn’t know who I was and ignored me, throwing himself on his mother and burying his face in her elegant skirt. She suggested that he go to the bathroom before they left, and he obligingly went.

  “That’s great that he goes alone.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But you wouldn’t want to use it after him.”

  We laughed, and I thought that I should suggest a playdate. Maybe if it was just the two of them.

  We could hear the water running on the other side of the door, going off and on again. Jack H.’s mother rolled her eyes in the direction of the bathroom and then suddenly put a hand on my arm.

  “I’ve been meaning to say, I’m so sorry about—whatever it is.”

  “Oh, it’s OK,” I said, too quickly. “They’ll probably be best friends by next week.”

  “Maybe—but it’s still not OK.” She looked suddenly flustered, and I felt an unexpected sympathy.

  “Jack told me—I’m so sorry.”

  One thing I hadn’t expected about getting divorced was the way everyone wants to talk to us about it. There’s a predictable voyeurism in it, but also a sense of duty. I wonder sometimes if it’s a particularly American thing, an obligation to probe the domestic upheavals of strangers.

  “Oh,” I said. “It’s OK—really. It wasn’t for a while, but now it is.”

  Jack’s mother gave me a searching look and lowered her voice. “I can imagine it would never be OK. And now you’re going through this too.”

  Did she mean the bullying? “Um—I hope not. I mean, I hope it will all be OK.”

  She nodded uncertainly. “I can see how the flour . . . helps. Do you think if he stopped bringing it, though, it might be easier for him?”

  “For my Jack?” The other Jack was coming out of the bathroom, drying his hands on his T-shirt, and so his mother lowered her voice:

  “I was just thinking, maybe the other kids would tease him less?”

  That night at bedtime I sang “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” even though it was nearly March. Jack drinks a cup of warm milk, followed by a bath, toothbrushing, books, peeing one last time, and then a song. I used to alternate among a few favorites: “Baby Beluga,” “This Land Is Your Land,” “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” Sinéad O’Connor’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes”—the first three because he knows them from school, and the third because I happen to remember all the lyrics. But last Christmas when he was four, we heard “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” in Rite Aid on Wilshire, and we’ve been singing it ever since. I’d always understood it as a sort of prayer to God for some merry gentlemen who might be suffering from fatigue, perhaps even the Wise Men, but it turns out that it’s “rest” in the sense of “keep” the gentlemen merry, and that they aren’t any particular gentlemen, but all of us—at least those of us who are members of the church.

  The other night, Jack stopped me near the beginning.

  “Was Mary a witch?” he asked unhappily.

  “Did she have special powers, you mean?”

  “The which His mother Mary did nothing take in scorn,” Jack repeated. I still need the iPhone to get started with each verse, but he knows all the words by heart.

  I explained that it was the other which, and what it meant: that Mary didn’t mind giving birth to Jesus in an animal’s stall, because Mary was a special kind of mother. I hoped he wouldn’t ask why Mary was special, since we haven’t yet gone into detail about conception, much less immaculate conception.

  “But Jesus is dead.”

  “No!” I said. “That’s the magic thing about Jesus. He was dead, but then he came back to life and went to heaven.”

  “Do you believe in heaven?” Jack asked.

  I started in on the thing I always say about my grandmother and how I still kind of feel her near me sometimes. Jack has heard this before and didn’t let me finish.

  “I want to believe in it.”

  “You can!” I told him. “Definitely. When you grow up—and I mean, now too. You can just believe in it.”

  I waited, but he didn’t say anything else, and so I kept singing:

  The shepherds at those tidings rejoiced much in mind,

  And left their flocks a-feeding in tempest, storm, and wind,

  And went to Bethlehem straightway, the son of God to find,

  O tidings of comfort and joy. . .

  Comfort and joy, comfort and joy, until the end of the song. When I finished I thought he was asleep, but then he turned over so that he was facing the door.

  “Sit by the door,” he said.

  We waited outside the classroom until they were ready for us. The children had just gone to the playground.

  “I wouldn’t mention the Chinese thing,” I told Drew. “They’ll take it the wrong way, I guarantee.”

  “You think I’m a total moron,” Drew said. “And by the way, there’s no reason to go into any more detail about our situation.” We had already met with both the teachers and the principal to discuss how best to handle the thing we were inflicting on our son. “We don’t even have to mention it, unless they bring it up.”

  “You think I’m a moron.”

  Then the pretty, young assistant teacher waved us in.

  “Welcome,” said the head teacher, whose name was Janine. “Thanks so much for coming in.”

  We sat down on the tiny wooden chairs.

  “I don’t think it’s too serious, but we want to make sure we understand what’s going on.”

  The assistant, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-four, gave us a sympathetic look. She had doll-like features and round, green eyes, accentuated by expertly plucked brows; she was wearing a loose-knit white sweater-vest over a pink T-shirt and corduroy pants, an outfit that managed to look both whimsical and stylish. Jack adored her and once had asked if she could come over to take a bath with him.

  One of the nice things about Drew is that if he finds another woman attractive, he doesn’t show it in front of me. He also tends to seek out the source of authority in a room and speak exclusively to that person—something he did with Janine, who looked appropriately teacherly, with a grayish brown braid and a pair of tortoiseshell glasses.

  “We thought maybe you were concerned about Malfin,” Drew said, mispronouncing the first syllable to rhyme with pal. “That’s his name for the flour.”

  “Oh—we know about Malfin,” Janine said, getting it right.

  Drew smiled companionably. He can be charming when he wants to. “He probably wanted to make cupcakes, and then when you said no”—he looked at me—“he started using it in his constructions. He likes to build cities—maybe you’ve noticed. Civilizations.”

  “Civilizations,” the teacher repeated neutrally.

  “Jack D. does love building,” the assistant piped up, and I thought that “Jack D.” was a person I didn’t know, who existed only in this classroom, and that Jack must undergo a metamorphosis every weekday morning. I thought of how he must spend those quiet drives to school, during which he stares out the window and insists on my playing Adele’s “Rumor Has It” on repeat, shedding Jack for Jack D. Molting.

  “He knew we weren’t making cupcakes,” I said. “He’s attached to the flour—the way another kid might be attached to a stuffed animal.”r />
  The teacher glanced down at a piece of paper, hidden in a manila folder, and frowned. “I’m sorry to ask something so personal—but since Jack has only been with us a year—”

  “It’s OK,” Drew and I said at the same time. We’ve answered every question enough times that it’s almost a relief to field them.

  “You didn’t have any kind of tragedy in your family?”

  I was confused, and I looked at Drew. Of course they knew about the tragedy already.

  “Tragedy?” Drew asked politely.

  “You’ve never had any other children?”

  “Of course not,” Drew said.

  Both teachers smiled with relief. “I don’t want you to be alarmed,” Janine said. “Jack has a vivid imagination, and sometimes kids with a lot of imagination make things up. For example—Jack said he had a sibling who died.”

  “He said what?” Drew exclaimed. But I could picture it: Jack sitting in the block area with two or three other kids, Jack H. among them. Raising his voice in the strident way he does when he feels he’s being ignored.

  “He told other children?”

  The teacher nodded apologetically, and I remembered Jack H.’s mother, how I had understood her to be talking about the divorce: I can imagine it would never be OK.

  “It was a little brother named Peter.”

  I maintained a serious expression, but a tiny part of me was proud. He had a sack of flour, and he named it Malfin, but when he wanted someone to buy his story, he knew how to hew to reality.

  “A lot of the kids are having little siblings,” Gemma explained. “And so we’ve been reading Peter’s Chair—he could have got the name from the book.”

  “We’ll talk to him,” Drew said.

  “I wouldn’t make a big deal about it. He’s been doing very well otherwise—we saved some of his work for you to see.” Janine handed Drew a sheaf of papers, many of them finger paintings. Drew looked through them, pretending interest, although the paintings were a mess. Then he tried to fold them, but the dried paint began to flake off onto the carpet.

  “Here,” I said, and rolled them together to put in my bag, since Jack likes to show us each production. Then I reached down to pick the paint chips out of the industrial carpeting.

  “Can we talk about the bullying?” Drew asked, and at that very inconvenient moment, I had a peculiar carbonated sensation, as if I’d been treated by one of those countertop soda makers everyone has now. I could feel the tug of whatever force propelling me upward, and so I hooked my feet around the base of the chair. Whether the chair was too light or the force too strong, I didn’t know—all I could tell was that I was taking the chair with me. I put my hand on the table next to me, a low round table they used for art projects, and was relieved that it remained stable; unfortunately that movement made me appear to be purposely tilting my chair in that direction, like a provocative teenager.

  “Bullying is too strong, I think,” Janine said. “But Jack H. is excluding Jack D. He’s keeping him out of the barrels.”

  I wanted to explain to Drew about the barrels, which I thought he might have failed to notice, but I was distracted by my predicament: Janine was staring at me, her natural eyebrows furrowed, and at any moment that tiny chair was going to lift off the floor. I couldn’t see any other option, and so I pitched myself forward onto the floor, right in the center of the impromptu circle the four of us had made with our chairs, landing on my stomach with my face very near Janine’s substantial leather clog. The sound that escaped from me obviously suggested I was hurt, although it was pure relief—that the impact of my fall seemed to have returned me to the realm of gravity.

  “Are you OK?” Gemma exclaimed.

  “Jesus,” said Drew. “Are you?”

  “No broken bones,” I said. “Sorry. I’m a klutz.” I sat back down in the chair, reassuringly anchored once again to the floor.

  “The chairs are treacherous,” Janine said drily. I could tell that she thought I’d engineered my bizarre fall in order to divert the conversation from our family’s multifarious problems.

  I turned to Gemma, whose sympathy suddenly struck me as genuine. “He’s afraid of dying,” I told her. “He’s been asking a lot of questions.”

  “Sex and death,” Gemma said cheerfully. “That’s what it’s all about—when you’re four.”

  “Sex?” Drew asked.

  “Their bodies,” said Janine. “Not sex per se. What I recommend is lots of clear information. Not detail, but clarity.”

  “About sex and death,” Drew said.

  “About everything,” Janine insisted. “Your custody agreement, especially. Does Jack have a calendar in both his rooms? It’s very important that he be able to visualize the time he’s spending with each of you.”

  “We did that,” Drew said, although we hadn’t.

  “Of course we’ll keep an eye on the situation with Jack H.— that’s our job.” Janine smiled meaningfully at us to remind us of our job: the clear information. Then she got up and thanked us for coming.

  “He takes after you,” Drew said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Storytelling.”

  “All kids do that.”

  “Lie for fun?”

  I had a sinking feeling as we descended the cinder-block stairwell, painted glossy white, our feet silent on the rubberized stairs. I thought of another thing we had told Jack, about how each of us would be happy to exchange his or her work for his days in school. That one I hadn’t realized was a lie until this moment, when the thought of being at the beginning of a long school career, as Jack was, filled me with dread.

  “I’ll be there Saturday at noon,” Drew said without expression, when we reached the first floor. Then he raised his hand cheerfully to the receptionist in the outer office and greeted her by name, before stepping out into the fierce sunlight. He put on his sunglasses, took out his phone, and then stood there in front of the school, e-mailing or texting with someone, a faint smile on his face.

  I walked down the long hallway, where a pair of glass doors led to the playground. There were several classes out there, and for a few moments I didn’t see him. It was a hot day, the sky big and white over their heads, and the children seemed to be running in spurts, and then resting. Their voices rose to sharp, brief crescendos, mimicking this frantic movement. Then I saw Jack in the sandbox, still playing with Ava.

  Sometimes I imagine a different child, although I’ve never admitted it to Drew. The one I picture is active and sun bronzed, a little wild maybe, a big eater and a hard sleeper. Not crazy about books, except for the kind that identifies types of construction vehicles or dinosaurs. It would’ve been unlikely for Drew and me to have a kid like that, but there was something about Jack’s position, crouched so intently over whatever imaginary game they were playing, that disappointed me. Suddenly he looked up: someone had called his name. I watched him stand up and make his way toward the barrels, where, sure enough, one bare leg hung out of the rectangular opening, the foot dangling in an army-green Keen.

  There was no explicit rule about parents on the playground, but we were obviously meant to wait and show ourselves to the children when the school day was finished. I thought they probably had only ten or fifteen minutes left. I glanced back at the exit, where Drew had finished with whatever conversation he’d been conducting and disappeared. Then I stepped out onto the playground and identified myself as Jack D.’s mom to the teachers on duty. Both of them nodded distractedly, each one shading her eyes with her left hand. I headed toward Ava and Jack, who had reached the barrel and were negotiating. It pleased me that Ava was pretty in such a conventional way: long blond hair and large, round blue eyes, slightly too close together, like one of those molded plastic dolls. It occurred to me, absurdly, that she could protect him.

  “This is only for the good guys,” I heard Jack H. say, as I came up behind them.

  “We’re bad guys!” said Ava, not getting it.

  “I’m
not a bad guy,” my Jack said, with disgust.

  “How old are you?” Jack H. asked, ignoring Ava.

  Lie now, I thought, but Jack gave his age correctly.

  “I’m five,” Jack H. said. “I had my bouncy-castle party. Ava was invited, and Henry—but not you.”

  Jack started to climb the ladder to the barrel. The other Jack stuck out his leg: “NO.” Then he looked up and saw me. My Jack turned around, and his surprise was replaced almost immediately by pleasure.

  “I’m a little early today.” I realized that I’d been thinking of them as older than they were when I saw the twin expressions of envy on the faces of the other two children.

  “He can’t come in,” said Jack H. My Jack looked at me.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “You have to say a secret.”

  “I have a secret,” my Jack said.

  Jack H. ignored him. “Ava, you can.” Ava scampered up the ladder: a turncoat in butterfly socks.

  “I have a secret,” I said. Jack H. considered this.

  Ava laughed. “Let Jack’s mommy come in.”

  “Only four kids in the barrel.”

  “And one mommy!”

  “There’s three kids,” my Jack corrected. But when he climbed the ladder, the other Jack didn’t stop him. All three children peered out at me from the rectangular opening. My Jack was smiling broadly. On the other side of the playground, the teachers were distributing balls from a nylon sack.

  The inside of the barrel was dim, even warmer than outside. The air was thick with glittery bits of dust. You sat with your feet at the lowest point, your back resting against the wooden curve. It was intimate and uncomfortable. The children looked at me with wonder.