“I’m glad to be married,” I whisper in Eric’s ear.
“I don’t like to fight, either,” he says. “Let’s just have fun tonight.”
“That’s the idea, honey,” I say. Then I turn to Ian. “I need a margarita!”
Ian takes one look at me and makes it extra strong. He calls it a Mexican martini, which seems like nothing more than a giant tequila shot with fresh lime juice. It’s made with exceptionally smooth añejo tequila, so I’m soon sipping away and catching up on the gossip with a couple of my old, single college buddies. I show pictures of Toby.
I’m glad Carla is here, back from Europe or wherever she was on her latest business trip and looking fantastic. Her only complaint these days is that she doesn’t dare date her favorite client, Steve, the only unmarried one she’s had in ages. Separated, actually, but the divorce is pending. Her boss is super-strict in his interpretation of their conflict of interest policy. You do not date clients. Ever. So she’s hoping Steve will change jobs and not hire her at his new company. Of course, she can’t breathe a word of that to Steve. She’ll make less money if it happens, but it would give her love life a chance. Once again, I’m happy to not have her set of problems.
By the time Eric and the other guys return from Ian’s patio holding a tray of fresh grilled fajitas, I’m finishing my second Mexican martini. I need to get food in my stomach. When I stand up, my brains slosh against the sides of my cranium, which feels as impenetrable as a Neanderthal’s.
I tend to ponder out loud when I’m tipsy. Eric says it’s more like pontificating. He likes to get me engaged in conversation once I have what we call a “swimmy head.” I’m good comic material for weeks afterward, evidently.
Tonight, the image of my brain as soup and my Neanderthal skull as the tureen makes me think of cavemen. Which makes me wonder if cavemen ate soup. No, they ate meat. I wonder if cavemen ever cared about the animals they hunted. Nobody pictures an empathic caveman. A caveman with a soul. But surely a soul would be older than a caveman. Then I wonder if cavemen got reincarnated, which makes me feel bad for the poor stupid caveman with the protruding brow. I imagine he might be relieved to be reincarnated into a more evolved body. Which makes me think about big old John Robberson cramming himself into Toby’s little chubby body. I cringe.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?” It’s Ian, who offers a plate of fajitas and puts his hand on my elbow.
“No, no, I’m fine. I think I need to eat.” I steady myself. “Thank you.” I feel like one of those people who can’t recognize faces because they only see one facial feature at a time. Eyes. Nose. I see Ian’s big goofy smile and I’m filled with fondness. He turns his head and I lose his smile. My focus is on the space where his chin should be. His skin hangs in a straight vertical line from his bottom lip to the top of his collar. Poor Ian.
I love the guy but don’t find him even remotely attractive. His appeal is on the inside. He’s so nice, so civilized. He’s like the opposite of a Neanderthal.
Which makes me think how disappointed some floating Neanderthal soul would be to leave behind his muscle tone and wake up in Ian’s supple skin. That would be the worst of both, wouldn’t it? I can’t help a little giggle.
“What’s so funny?”
“Do you ever wonder about who we are if we’re not our bodies?”
Ian looks at my empty glass and smiles. “Oh, yeah, I’m in. Whatcha thinking about, girl? This should be good.”
“I’m serious. Do you ever think about reincarnation?”
“Sure, sometimes. Do you?”
I look around for Eric, but he’s heading back to the patio, well out of earshot. I’m relieved to be able to just relax and talk about whatever I want. Ian settles in next to me on the sofa and we start with the caveman question, which evolves into a quasi rant. He hands me a sloppy nacho and another Mexican martini. Two sips in, all I can see is the lime pulp in my glass. My visual field is noticeably shorter, like I’m in permanent zoom mode on the camera. When I turn my head, it takes a second before the sound lines up with the picture. I try to focus.
He keeps prodding me for details, so even though I wasn’t planning to, I end up telling him about finding the real John Robberson.
“So tell, me. What do you really make of it? Is Toby a reincarnated fighter pilot?”
“I don’t know,” I say, trying to have the conversation only with Ian and not everyone who’s sitting on the back of the sofa. “I think if he really were the reincarnation of John Robberson, he’d speak differently of him. He’d recount memories, right? But it’s a mash-up. Toby talks about him like he’s a separate entity, but he’s replicating pilot memories when he plays. He knows things he can’t possibly know. See what I mean? That’s when it flips for me. Acting it out is a game. Memories are evidence.”
Eric approaches, beer in hand. “Did someone say pilot?” My neck and cheeks flush. I don’t know how much he overheard.
“Not just pilot. Fighter pilot, dude,” says Ian.
“Don’t encourage him.” I wave at Mamie. “Come over and tell me what you’re working on these days. Don’t you have a show coming up?”
I turn my back to Eric and Ian but can’t follow what Mamie says. All I can hear is the swagger in Eric’s voice.
He leans his head back, sticks out his chest, and says, “You know, back in the day, when it was just me in that single-seater Thud, carpet bombing the Dragon’s Jaw, I pulled a high-G barrel roll to get away from the little shit behind me about to gun my ass down.”
What?
Ian smiles. “Dragon’s Jaw?”
“You know you’re in trouble when you pickle the bombs off, pull back on the stick, and instead of a standard pullout, you get snapped into a hard right roll.”
Ian gestures to him and nudges me. “Check out the wannabe.”
“Do you think he practiced in the mirror?” I force a laugh, determined not to allow him the satisfaction of seeing he’s getting to me.
Eric winks at Mamie. “Yeah, I remember when I felt the resistance on that right side, I realized that damn bomb was still in the hole.”
“What are you talking about?” Mamie asks, as we turn to face the guys.
“My days back in ’Nam, sweetheart.”
She says to me, “Why’s he talking like that?”
“He’s drunk. How many fingers am I holding up, Eric?”
Eric asks Ian, “Don’t you want to know how I got out of it?”
“Bring it.”
Gesturing with his hands, he explains. “The weight pulled me right, so I knew the bomb was still there. So what do I do?” He raises his eyebrows, holds the question for a beat. “Reversed the rollout to the left side, going with the drag of the extra weight instead of fighting it.”
Ian pauses, head cocked, lips pursed. “You got the jargon down cold. Truly impressive.” He nods and offers his beer as a toast. “Simple physics, right?”
Eric clinks his long-necked bottle to Ian’s. “Engineers unite.”
“Been reading any military thrillers lately?”
Eric smiles and takes a swig. “Can I get you another beer, buddy?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
*
PARTY RECAP
I leave Ian’s with a tiny shred of leftover party mood that dies somewhere in the taxi on the way home. Eric doesn’t say a word. We crawl into bed, and I send out the “leave me alone” vibe. In the morning, I go out of my way to demonstrate that I do not have a hangover, despite my dry mouth and radioactive regret. He leaves early to ride his bike downtown so he can retrieve our car from Ian’s. It feels like the door sucks the energy out of the room as it shuts behind him, louder than usual, a borderline slam that I hope made more noise than he intended.
It wakes Toby up. You’d think he was the one with the hangover. He’s grouchy from the minute his little foot hits the floor, which is unusual for him. I let him eat an entire cantaloupe for breakfast—his favorite—but he throws his fork on the ground bef
ore he’s finished.
“I don’t want any more!”
“Here now, Tobe. That’s not the way to act at the table. We don’t throw our forks. What should you do instead?”
“May I be excused?” he grumbles.
“That’s right. My goodness, what’s gotten into you today?”
“I don’t want to see her!”
“Right. We talked about this. You don’t have to, remember?”
“I’m not going to!”
“That’s right.”
While Toby plays with his planes in the living room, I can’t stop thinking about Eric’s weird fighter-pilot rant. The longer I think about it, the creepier it seems.
I call Carla to recap the party. She thinks it’s nothing more than Eric grandstanding. She says, “Please. He overhears you say memories are evidence, and he makes up a fake memory right there, on the spot, to make his point.”
“You didn’t hear it.”
“True. So ask someone who did. See what Ian thinks.”
I text him, since he’s at work. He thinks phone calls are rude interruptions left over from a previous technological age.
What was that thing with Eric last night? Was it as weird as I think?
He answers within two seconds: He was drunk. nbd
No big deal? I don’t know why I’m asking Ian for insight into an emotionally nuanced situation. Of course he thinks it’s no big deal. He thinks not marrying Mamie is no big deal.
I call Carla back. “I need for you to talk me down,” I say. “Tell me it wasn’t tip-of-the-iceberg weird. That nothing woo-woo happened last night. Convince me.”
“You know Eric. He takes everything to its logical extreme. If you say this thing with Toby is more than a game, then he’s exaggerating the game to show you how ridiculous it looks. It’s like he’s daring you to try to make a big deal of it because he knows you’ll sound crazy. I think he’s hoping you’ll realize how crazy it sounds and let it go.”
“Do you think I sound crazy?”
“I think you were both drunk and he acted like a dick to make the point that you’re overreacting to all this fighter-pilot stuff. So don’t overreact to his version; it just proves his point,” Carla says. “If it were me, I’d make the point that he shouldn’t act like a dick and make fun of me in front of my friends. But you gotta decide whether you want to pick that fight or not.”
“I don’t want to pick a fight. I just want to be able to talk to my husband.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
*
UNDER PRESSURE
Eric and I haven’t had a decent conversation all week—not since Ian’s party. I think Toby’s picking up on the tension in the house. His objections to Kay are worse in the mornings, I’ve noticed. Where’s the kid who laughed in his sleep? I don’t think he’s waking up in the middle of the night; he’s not calling out for me, at least. He says he doesn’t have nightmares. In fact, he says he doesn’t dream at all. I write it down in my notes. I don’t know if he doesn’t dream, if he just doesn’t remember, or if his language skills aren’t developed enough to articulate it yet. I don’t know how accurate anyone can be when talking about what happens in their sleep. Even when I catch him doing it, Eric says he doesn’t sleepwalk anymore.
I simply don’t know. Whatever is going on in my kid’s head at night, it’s making him wake up as grouchy as Pa used to be right after my mom died. Every morning, he’d have to realize all over again that he was alone.
Today, I decide to try a distraction technique, so we take an early-morning trip to the grocery store. Instead of getting a cart, we walk hand in hand down the aisle. It’s a pleasant change, even if I have to keep stopping to replace items kept at knee height. We take our time.
“Shelly?” An almost-familiar face is smiling at me, a woman pushing her squirmy son in a cart toward us. “It’s Wendy—from the playgroup?”
“Of course! Toby, do you remember Dylan?”
We’d met at the last neighborhood playgroup. She was new and noticeably more granola than most of the women I call the Other Mothers, the gray in her long hair seeming like a statement. She’s going gray without apology or chemical deterrents. I like that.
“He’s still on the airplane jag, huh?” she says, as Toby shows Dylan his F-105. “Is his imaginary friend still around?”
That’s how I talk about John Robberson. It makes people feel better. Wendy and I make small talk and go our separate ways.
When we reach the bakery aisle, Toby asks me where they keep the oatmeal cream pies. It’s been weeks since we’ve talked about oatmeal cream pies.
“They don’t sell them here, Toby. Remember?”
“Why not?”
“I think they’re not healthy enough.”
“Yes, they awe.”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“Thud wants one.”
“They’re really not healthy for Thud. Dogs like meat. Not sugar.”
Toby lets out a shriek that would raise the dead and flings his entire body onto a basket that holds thin loaves of crusty French bread. The basket crashes over, sending the half-exposed loaves out of their fancy paper wrappers and sliding across the newly mopped floor. Toby is grabbing any loaf within reach and throwing it, screaming, “I don’t want to!”
It happens so fast, I barely know what to do. I reach for him out of pure instinct, but he clocks me with a long baguette. A small crowd is forming at the end of the aisle.
“Toby!” I wrap my arms around his, preventing him from using any more bread as a weapon. “What is it, baby?”
As quickly as it flared up, it passes. He collapses against me. We’re both crying as we sit on the bakery floor. I know my kid. This is not like him.
Wendy and Dylan appear out of nowhere. “Need a hand?” she says.
“We’re fine. Just need a minute.” I whisper to her, over Toby’s head, “Can you get rid of the spectators?”
She nods and rolls her cart directly into the crowd, causing them to dissipate. For a few moments. I can just sit cross-legged on the cold linoleum tiles and rock Toby, shushing his sobs. When he can speak, I ask him if he can tell me what upset him.
“Kay.”
I can’t be objective and just write this on a list somewhere. I have to say it.
“Oh, baby. Kay’s not going to hurt you.”
“I don’t want to talk to her.” He flings his arm, like he’s throwing a toy. “I don’t!”
“You don’t have to, remember? Nobody is going to make you. You’re the boss.”
He sniffles.
“There. Okay.” The other shoppers have returned to their own business, but we’re still on the floor together.
“Now that you know that you don’t have to see her,” I say to Toby, “can I ask you a few questions about Kay? I want to understand why you’re upset.”
He nods.
“Who is Kay?”
“John Wahbuhson’s wife.”
I do a double take in the grocery aisle. After nodding to a shopper who looks disapprovingly at us on the floor, I whisper, “Whose wife?”
“John Wahbuhson’s!”
“Okay, okay. What does John Robberson say to you about Kay?’
“We have to go see her.”
“And you don’t want to see her, I know. But if you’re the boss, and you know you don’t have to see her, I don’t understand why you get so upset.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know, baby.” I kiss his forehead. “But help me understand why not.”
Toby’s face turns into a little ball of fury, in a split second. “I don’t want to!”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. No more talk. Let’s finish our shopping, and we can get a strawberry smoothie.”
Toby’s satisfied, but I’m still rattled as we walk into the juice bar that adjoins the grocery store. I see Wendy at a table with three Other Mothers including Pauline, the president of the homeowners association. What are the others’ names? Emil
y and … Renee, was it? Remy? Something like that. I order Toby’s smoothie and let him join the kids at the other table.
“You okay now?” asks Wendy.
I hold up my drink, a bright green concoction of kale and cucumber juice. “I almost asked for a vodka shot in this one!”
“We’ve all been there,” she says with a laugh.
“How’s Toby?” Pauline asks, knowingly.
“He seems to be fine now,” I say. “So weird. The oatmeal cream pies set him off.”
Pauline looks around the table, eyebrow cocked, before she erupts in laughter. When she speaks, she’s not talking to me. “He’s afraid of oatmeal cream pies? Shelly, let the kid have a little sugar now and then!”
“That’s not it,” I say, cutting the joke short. “I actually understand his reaction. That’s why I’m a little shaken, to tell you the truth.”
“Does this have anything to do with that imaginary friend you were so worried about?” Emily asks.
“Not so imaginary, as it turns out.” I blurt it all out, from the oatmeal cream pies to the Thud and how I tracked it down but didn’t find John Robberson on the pilot list; and the whole thing about the 395 crashes but only 61 of them being operational; which opens the door to telling them how I took Toby back to the scene of the crime, the Boneyard, and his weird trance and how disappointed I was; and then how Toby heard John Robberson at the dinner table but the doctor said it was nothing to worry about; and how I kept digging until I found a real John Robberson who had actually died on Toby’s birthday.
“The very same day,” I say, a tad triumphantly, as I pause for a breath.
The Other Mothers exchange a glance, and too late, I realize I’ve stopped them cold. I take a long sip from my green drink, which is beginning to separate and look unappetizing.
“That’s quite a coincidence,” says Renee or Remy or whatever her name is.
Pauline asks, “How, exactly, did you put this together?”
Wendy adds, because I think she’s trying to help me out, “Oh, you’d be surprised what you can find on the Internet.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know where to look,” Pauline says.
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