Fearless

by Rafael Yglesias

  “My old firm is handling Byron’s case,” Diane said. Her small mouth spread, revealing small yellow teeth. She was attempting a friendly smile. “They’re very good. If you want I can arrange for them to take over.”

  Max’s mother and sister, looking more and more as if they were sisters, gradually moved down the hall toward them. Their chubby faces and deep amused voices were strange to him. He had a flash of memory—a still photo of his mother as she knelt on the sidewalk beside his dead father. She was skinny. Her black hair, rich and curly, bounced with each of her sobs and cries for help. Recalled to his consciousness years ago by his therapy, Max knew what he had thought about his mother at that instant, at that sad and by now legendary moment of their family history, as she tried to cradle his dying father’s head, lifting it from the concrete of New York. She’s so beautiful, thirteen-year-old Max had thought. How old was she, with her lover dead, her children fatherless? Thirty-seven. Five years younger than Max now. Poor woman. She had remained alone for all those years.

  Diane Hummel said softly, “Are you okay?”

  Max looked at her. She seemed surprised by something on his face. He reached for his cheeks and discovered they were wet with tears. Max dabbed at them with the palm of his hand. Peter no longer appeared self-satisfied. He stared at Max with dispassionate curiosity.

  “I’m sorry,” Max said. “Thank you for your offer. But I picked Brillstein because he’s second-rate, because it’s a big score for him. He’s been second-rate his whole life—just like me—and he thinks he needs just one break. I know he’s sleazy—I understand that he’s gotten several of the other survivors as clients by introducing himself as the Good Samaritan’s lawyer.”

  “So you know about that?” Diane said in a musing tone.

  “Max,” his mother said, arms and hands out. She and his sister Kate had arrived at the living room. “No kiss?”

  “Sure, Mom,” Max said and rose dutifully. He talked to Diane while crossing the room to his mother. He touched his mother’s cheek with his lips briefly. The skin was soft and flabby and cold from the outdoors. Thirty years before, the widowed woman on the sidewalk had tight skin and gaunt cheeks. “I don’t really believe it’s going to take any skill to make a killing off this and I wanted that schlepper to have his big break.”

  “What schlepper?” his sister said. “Are we talking about one of my old boyfriends?”

  Max kissed Kate as well. Her skin wasn’t soft or loose. He finished his explanation to Diane: “Brillstein may blow the case but he’ll never be able to say he didn’t have a chance at the big time.”

  “Is this man a friend of yours?” Peter said. He frowned resentfully as though he suspected Max of being a tease.

  “No,” Max said gently. He continued softly, apologetically to Diane: “I guess it sounds crazy to you. But you’ve been at the top always, right? I mean I don’t know, but I get the feeling you were top in your class and that you’ve had your pick of jobs—”

  “Diane’s a killer lawyer,” Peter said with a confusing mix of pride and acerbity.

  “I haven’t had my pick,” Max said. “And yet I think I’m as smart as you. And I know in his heart of hearts Brillstein thinks he’s as good as any lawyer. Maybe we’re both kidding ourselves. But we deserve a shot, don’t we?”

  “Max,” his mother said, a note of alarm and urgency in her tone.

  “Yes, Mom?” he waited for her predictable reassurance, her usual tepid spoonful of soupy praise. What would it be? You’re not second-rate; in fifth grade Mrs. Horowitz said you were a visual genius. Or one of her negative palliatives: You do your best, Max, that’s all anyone can ask and your best is very good, better than most. Or perhaps the gift of her physical compensation: a kiss on the forehead, a mumbled “You’re a good man, Max,” her eyes shining into his, hands lingering on his waist a few Oedipal seconds too many.

  “Max,” she said, again insistent.

  “What?”

  “No lawsuit talk on Thanksgiving. No crash talk. We’re supposed to give thanks today, aren’t we?”

  “We’re Jewish, Ma,” Kate said. “We don’t give thanks, we just stop complaining.” Kate enjoyed her own joke, laughing hard. So did Harry. Their mother also; she laughed hard and reached for her daughter’s hand to give it an appreciative squeeze. Even Peter smiled—cautiously.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Diane Hummel said angrily. The amusement was embarrassed into silence. She stood rigidly, her sleek black hair as tight and shiny on her scalp as if it were black enamel. Her lips had thinned to a pale red line. Her hands were clenched at her waist, lowered but ready for a fight. She raised her bony chin and declaimed in a voice fit for argument before the Supreme Court: “Thanksgiving belongs to all Americans.”

  Later, when Max passed Diane the plate of stuffing, she said in a low voice, “They’re all ghouls anyway. Even the best.”

  “Who?” Max asked.

  “The aviation liability lawyers,” she mumbled. “Ghouls in Paul Stuart suits.”

  Max didn’t have an appetite for the meal. He had lost it somewhere in the living room conversation. He knew that he would have to test himself soon.

  Jonah and Sam didn’t want to linger at the table. Each time they tried to escape, Flora or Harry or Debby or Peter held them with either a bribe of dessert, a threat of failing some standard of maturity, or an unfavorable comparison to Byron. Byron was a paragon because, encouraged by his father’s interviewer’s manner, he ate all of Flora’s dishes and entertained the adults with statements of his architectural ideas and explanations of what Architron could do.

  “Why don’t we have educational games like that for Jonah?” Debby asked Max.

  “It’s not a game,” Max said. Jonah rolled his eyes and whispered something to Sam. Max continued, “It’s a thousand-dollar piece of software that Jeff and I didn’t think we could afford.”

  “A thousand dollars!” Diane Hummel exclaimed to her husband. “Have you gone out of your mind? I thought it was twenty-five bucks.”

  “A thousand dollars?” Sam said in a drawling whine. “For a thousand dollars you could buy every Nintendo game in the world!”

  “In the universe!” Jonah said.

  “Yeah!” said little Jake, rubbing his mucous mustache. “In both universes!”

  “I’ll get you a tissue,” Debby said to Jake. “Or you could use your napkin.” Debby leaned over and offered Jake his pristine napkin.

  Jake crossed his little arms, ducked his chin to his chest, and shook his head from side to side, saying, “No.”

  Debby appealed to Nan to support her position. Jake’s mucus was running again, new cloudy fluid oozing over the dried black and yellow mustache.

  “Leave him,” Nan said. She had been sullen throughout the meal. Except for a comment, as she took a second helping of turkey, that she would have to go to an extra aerobic class.

  The two grandmothers, although Jake was no relation to them, exchanged sad looks. Flora mumbled, “It’s not very sanitary.” Max’s mother nodded at him to intervene. Debby meanwhile was still poised, halfway out of her chair, Jake’s napkin in her hand, hovering about a foot away from his smeared upper lip. Nan dropped her eyes to her plate and resumed eating. Debby looked at Max for help.

  As always she assumed it was his job to make up for the failures of others. “You want to do something, do it,” Max said to her.

  “Peter,” Diane Hummel was saying to her husband, speaking in an intense whisper, although of course everyone could hear her. “Are you out of your mind? Spending that kind of money on a child?”

  “I’m not a child,” Byron said and Debby, still focused on Jake’s nose, laughed. “I’m not,” he said to her. “Not after what I’ve lived through.” Byron inhaled dramatically and exhaled with emphasis, a magnified sigh. “I’ve told my dad. He’s just got to get used to it. I’m never going to be normal again.”

  “You know,” Nan said while chewing food. The words were muffled
by her stuffed mouth. “You ought to take him to a shrink. He’s got problems.”

  Peter Hummel was offended. He showed it by leaning back in his chair, stiffening to attention, eyes wide, showing a lot of white.

  “I see a shrink,” Byron said, confusing Max, who didn’t know it and didn’t understand. If Byron was seeing a therapist why was Peter so scandalized by the suggestion? “He agrees with me. He doesn’t think I’m a normal kid.”

  “So you’re not normal. So that’s why your parents should buy you thousand-dollar toys,” Nan said and resumed eating. Jonah and Sam both smiled at each other, flashing their big and little teeth.

  “I don’t think that’s fair—” Peter Hummel began sternly to Nan.

  “We’re going to have to talk about this,” his wife was saying at him.

  “I need it!” Byron protested to his mother.

  Debby, perhaps thinking all this confusion would distract Jake, finally got her courage up, dipped the napkin in a water glass and stabbed at his snotty mustache.

  Jake screamed. A piercing howl of innocence violated.

  Shocked, Debby backed away. But without the napkin. It stayed behind stuck to Jake’s upper lip, adhered by his natural glue. Jake batted at it wildly with the backs of his hands, but the napkin didn’t come off. His brother Sam laughed so hard he fell sideways onto Jonah. Jonah also convulsed, bits of food appearing at his lips, coughed up by laughter.

  “Enough!” Max roared. He stood and reached across the table, pulling the napkin off Jake. A line of snot floated in the air for a moment and then fell gracefully into the serving bowl of cranberry sauce. Sam and Jonah both stared, mouths open, and then fell again into each other’s arms laughing with open mouths, showing their odd teeth. “Go play video games!” Max shouted at them as if he were Moses ordering his people across the Red Sea. Their laughter stopped and they hopped out of their chairs, scrambling on all fours in their hurry to escape.

  “Max!” Debby protested.

  “That’s what they want to do. For God’s sake, at least somebody is made happy by something. Let them do it in peace and without shame! Without all this goddamn shame!” Max shut his eyes and took a long breath.

  He heard but could not see Nan as she said in a bored throaty voice: “We’re not talking about jerking off, Max. I don’t think they’ll become traumatized adults if we embarrass them about playing Gameboy.”

  That opened Max’s eyes. What he saw was clouded. His vision was blurred by something floating on his eyes. It muddied the faces of all but Byron. The boy’s head was up, his eyes were shining, and he showed off a grin of awareness.

  “Nan, please!” Debby said. “What a mouth you’ve got tonight.”

  Max blinked hard and that cleared his sight. Peter and Harry seemed to have retreated into their chests. They had the false self-absorbed looks of passengers on a subway car pretending not to notice the approach of an armed gang.

  “Listen, honey,” Nan said. She dropped her fork onto her plate and it clattered loudly—a harsh cue warning of an attack.

  “Take it easy, Nan,” Max’s sister Kate mumbled across the table.

  “I am so sick and tired of you and Max taking over with my kids! Who the fuck do you think you are! If you spent less time wiping my baby’s nose and more time kicking your nutty husband in the ass to testify to the truth! To the truth, for God’s sake! So that we can get what we deserve for what—” Nan stopped. Her eyes narrowed. She swallowed hard. In a minute she would be crying. That was her pattern—when making demands Nan traveled from rage to tears.

  It was time, Max decided. “Excuse me,” he said. He moved away from the table, turned and left the dining room.

  Byron called, “Wait for me.”

  Max went down the hallway toward the bedrooms seeking Jonah. In case he lost the gamble this time, he wanted to say goodbye. He was only halfway there when Byron bumped at his side.

  “Hi.”

  Max didn’t answer. He would have to get rid of him. They passed the living room entrance and turned down another hall leading to Debby’s old room where the boys would be playing.

  “I know what jerking off means,” Byron said.

  “Un huh.” Another turn past a bathroom and they were there. The door was shut.

  “It means playing with yourself,” Byron said.

  “That’s right,” Max said. He knocked.

  “Come in,” Jonah said.

  Max opened the door and pushed Byron in. “I want the three of you to play together. I have to go out for a little while.”

  “Okay,” Jonah said unenthusiastically.

  Byron fought against Max’s hands to leave with him. “I don’t want to. I don’t like video games.”

  “That is sick,” Sam said. He was playing his portable game: head down, fingers dancing, feet shifting weight in time with imagined combat.

  “Shut up,” Jonah said in a friendly tone and touched his friend gently on the back of his head as if mocking a punishment.

  “Go and play,” Max shoved Byron in and then pointed his finger like a scold.

  “Okay,” Byron said. He was suddenly dignified. He stepped back from Max and entered the room, his high bright cheeks shining, his small eyes unblinking and bold. He stopped and faced Max. “But I want to know one thing. Dad says now that you’ve closed your office I can’t visit you after school. Why can’t I come to your apartment? I could even walk from school to your apartment. It’s only eleven blocks. My friend Timmy walks home and that’s nine blocks—”

  Byron was willing and more than able to argue this point at length. Max cut him off. “We’ll figure something out. I have to go.” Max entered the room and hurried up to Jonah. His son shied away at his approach, with a touch of fear that hurt Max’s feelings. He caught Jonah by the shoulder and pulled him close for a hug. He bent down—he didn’t have to go very far down anymore—and whispered, “I love you. Take care of yourself.”

  Jonah was already pulling away, squirming low and out of Max’s embrace. “Okay—” he grumbled.

  “Bye,” he said to Sam. His dead partner’s son was still curved into the small video screen, his body jerking in alliance with his arcade alter ego.

  Max left, going past Byron quickly, waving.

  “Promise?” Byron said to him.

  “We’ll figure it out,” he said and left, shutting the door fast behind him. He didn’t continue down the hall. Leaning his back against the door, Max consciously breathed steadily, to recover from the worry of his goodbye.

  “What game are you playing?” he heard Byron ask.

  It took a while before there was a response. Jonah finally said in a sullen grudging way: “It’s Boxxil. And you’re not very good at it,” he continued, presumably to Sam.

  “Well, how can I concentrate with all these interruptions?” Sam whined, a childish pronunciation of his dead father’s favorite rationalization.

  “I’m not good at any video games,” Byron said.

  Max pushed off from the door, ready to leave for good, satisfied the boys had made some sort of truce.

  “Nobody’s good at them at first,” Jonah said. “You have to play them a lot before you get good.”

  “Ah!” Sam groaned. The game played a dirge. “Except for me. The more I play, the more terrible I am.”

  “You want a turn?” Jonah asked Byron.

  Max was about to go. He waited, however, gratified by his son’s civility and curious about Byron’s response. “No,” Byron answered. “They’re boring. It’s not like Architron. You have to use your brain and your imagination to do Architron.”

  “Well,” Sam drawled. “What’s so great about it? You can draw buildings in colors. Wow! That’s really great!”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Jonah said, laughing. “Haven’t you ever heard of crayons!”

  “You’re both stupid,” Byron said in a low confident voice.

  “Well, stupid me is going to play,” Jonah said.

  There was silence
. Max said to himself: Go. It’s time. You already know everything there is to know about their lives. You know the sad broken adults they’ll become; you know how they will fail.

  He heard the game’s tinny music.

  “Your dad thinks playing computer games is stupid,” Byron said. “He didn’t even like me playing computer chess. What he likes is architecture, that’s why he’s so interested in my designs.”

  Byron got no response. Only the game’s music could be heard for an answer.

  Byron resumed after a few moments of silence. “Your dad wanted to own Architron. You know? But he couldn’t afford it. He would be good at it. He only draws small things but they work. I don’t know if my buildings would work.”

  “Oh, that’s really great,” Sam whined slowly, a turntable spinning at an incorrect setting. “Buildings that fall down the minute you step into them!”

  “Crash!” Jonah said.

  “You’re dead!” Sam laughed. He laughed coarsely, almost coughing.

  There was another silence. Go, Max, he told himself. There’s nothing but loss and defeat in their youth. You can’t rescue them.

  “Your dad is interested in what I do,” Byron said. “He likes me better than he likes you. He’d rather spend time with me. I think your dad loves me more than he loves you.”

  Max waited for Jonah to answer. But there was only the game’s melody.

  “He does,” Byron said after a while. “Your dad is really more interested in the things I’m good at.”

  The computer beeped wildly. Sam exclaimed, “You did it!”

  “That’s the highest score of any of my friends!” Jonah said, exhausted triumph in his voice.

  “Big deal,” Byron said. “Somebody in the world has a better score.”

  Max walked away. He watched his scuffed leather loafers step on the narrow oak boards, bordered by the darker strips that framed each side. His feet had walked on these ubiquitous New York floors for all of his forty-two years. He had crawled on them in Washington Heights as a baby. They had split his chin on the Upper West Side as a toddler. He had raced Matchbox cars that fitted perfectly on their narrow width. He had wet them with grief for his dead father. He had fallen asleep on them in the dark while sneaking to overhear the adults talk of sex in the living room. He had stripped and sanded and polyurethaned and stained and bleached them as an architect. He had carpeted them, he had made love on them, he had tiled them, he had cursed them. How many times had they supported the tedious walk away from defeat?