by L. A. Fields
“Which of my professors thought I needed counseling? Was it Beekman? I bet it was her, she really didn’t like me.”
“This isn’t punitive, Ray,” Mr. Sensitive reiterates, and then seems to decide to go the extra mile. “You know, you remind me a lot of myself at your age,” he says. “I held myself to pretty high standards and it caused me to have a rough year once too, but look: I’m living proof that you can recover from this and still have a great life.”
Ray clamps both lips in between his teeth and looks out the window at the building’s generators to compose this in a way that won’t get him expelled.
“Um, no offense, but if this—” Ray waves his hand to encompass the whole office with its dusty blinds and neutral walls and the fucking drinky bird on the desk that’s just begging to get its pipey neck snapped “—is all I have to look forward to, I’d rather be hanged.”
The counselor makes a tsk noise and grimaces.
“I hope you’re not thinking of harming yourself, Raymond, and if you’re just being flip, this isn’t really the appropriate time or place.”
“It was just a figure of speech,” Ray says, changing his demeanor to the one he knows everyone likes, the one that gets them off his back no matter what the problem is. “I was only joking.” Smile, cock the head downward and subservient-like, shrug of one shoulder.
“It’s not a very funny joke, but your professors did say you like to make your classmates laugh.” He takes a card off his desk and hands it to Ray, with his name that Ray still doesn’t bother to know, and his contact information in case Ray wants to flush some more of his life away.
“Alright, thanks, you know,” Ray says, standing up and lunging for the door. “This has made me feel sort of better, so thanks.”
He’s in the hallway, he slams into the press-bar of the side door, he can’t leave fast enough.
He will have to get his grades up, he knows that. He’s already got his ZBT brothers grumbling about his drinking, he doesn’t need them on his case about his grade average too. He can’t get kicked out of the house, he can’t get kicked out of school, and he certainly can’t become one of those idiots who somehow manages to sabotage themselves just before the finish line.
And good lord . . . just imagine what Noah would think of him! Noah who went back to Chicago and spent all semester proving himself: perfect grades, a TA-ship or something, and he’s even talking to girls in French and Italian (hopefully about something other than himself—people do get sick of hearing about how smart he is), taking them out bird-watching, becoming everybody’s perfect gentlemen.
Ray doesn’t want to begrudge Noah his successes, and in a way Ray regards them as his own victories as well; Noah’s newfound graces are clearly the result of his attendance at the Raymond Klein Finishing School, but . . . it’s horrible to think that such an unpromising student has surpassed such a once-sterling master.
Everyone in Ray’s life will be let down if he keeps screwing up like this, but nobody has ever thought more highly of him than Noah, and a fall that far could shatter a boy so used to being admired.
1
THE DAY NOAH F. KAPLAN, Jr. was born, everyone knew he was the family’s last baby. That made him the baby. Not just the most recent baby, but the baby boy, the baby brother, for the rest of his life.
He was the third son, but very nearly the fifth miscarriage. His oldest brother was born with very few problems, but Michael was followed by two miscarriages, Samuel put his mother in bed for six months just to be born, then two more miscarriages in the pursuit of a daughter, and then Noah: a full pregnancy immobile, and it left his mother’s kidneys in irrevocable distress. Bad kidneys ran in the generations above her, and they’d probably appear in her children as well, is what everyone thought but didn’t say.
With Mother so ill and her first two boys so young and boisterous, nurses were employed. There was a household to run, a good old-fashioned household with a cook and a maid and a man for the yard; a machine, oiled by father’s elbow grease and fan-belted with money.
The baby was sick too. Born just a touch too soon, underweight and with fussy lungs. Since neither one was contagious, mother and baby were held aloft together from the rest of the family like crazy coots, up on the second floor, in a room with plenty of light and airy windows, a room where a healthy woman might love to paint.
And that year, of course, winter came early, and boxed mother Faye into her own personal Overlook Hotel. And the light hardly ever warmed from the corpse-like blue-white light that glows out of snow. And the slush running in the streets made the help unreliable. And sunlamps couldn’t touch the seasonal depression, which compounded with her post-partum doldrums in ways that quietly floored her; the combination was simply, stunningly stupefying. And the baby was her only real company, as Mike and Sam romped shamelessly outside her windows, and Noah Sr. went to work and went to work and went to work.
She might have resented the baby’s presence if Noah Jr. had been like her other sons were as infants. Any discomfort experienced by those boys and they’d scream the roof to the ground, but not Noah. He would only grunt and squirm in frustration, like he knew what he wanted to do, but his fine motor skills just hadn’t developed yet! It endeared him to his mother, the way he laid there like a lump and fumed noiselessly when something was wrong. It was as if he didn’t want to bother her, but damned if he could figure out how to change his own diaper, so Faye helped him out.
“Good morning, sweet baby,” she began greeting him each day, and each day she started to mean it more and more truly. “Good morning and happy day, my sweet baby, let’s wake up!”
More often than not the baby seemed to roll his eyes at her, but that only spurred their conversations into healthy debates.
“I know you feel that way now, and in all honesty so do I,” Faye told him, “but you won’t remember these first few months someday, nobody ever does.” Faye had the strength some mornings to get on a pair of thick socks and her fleece sweater and push the bassinet over to the window where she had a heavily-cushioned rocking chair she liked to ease into. “Hopefully we timed it right so that your first memory will be of spring, my love. Maybe Mommy will feel better by then too, wouldn’t that be nice? And maybe someday, somehow you’ll remember us both stepping out into sunshine for the first time. My hair has a little bit of red in it, but you can’t see that in this light. And who knows what you’re like in the sun, hmm? Maybe you’re secretly happy. Maybe you’ll get some of your granny’s freckles, or turn auburn like your one cousin, what do you think?”
Noah frowned and blew a burble with his lips. Most of his noises were like those that came out of small, shook up jugs of liquid.
“So moody, aren’t you? Or maybe you’re just gassy, hmm? Which end did that noise come out of, hmm? Well, Mommy’s gassy too, and it’s all your fault, but I don’t blame you. It’s not like you meant to tie a bunch of knots in here, is it?” Faye patted her torso gently, the same way she did when it was occupied, smoothing her nightgown with fingers that had aged drastically over this last pregnancy, that looked more like her mother’s fingers than her own, all knobby knuckles and deep lines. Normally she preferred to sleep in pajama pants, but the waistband was too tight for her now, squeezing her kidneys uncomfortably. She imagined her insides all stirred up and tender like a chunky stew and hoped this baby of all of the three would be the most worth it, hoped he would end up being her favorite in the years to come.
“I do hope you’re worth all this trouble,” she told him.
Baby Noah continued to make more bubbling noises, but also did a double leg-stomp for emphasis on whatever he was trying to communicate.
“No, no, baby, no promises yet, just know we expect great things from you, okay? Straight A’s, a good job, a heap of grandchildren, but take your time, take your time.” The snow outside turned to ice and started to sting the glass of the window. “You’ve got plenty of time.”
2
WHEN RAY
MOND A. KLEIN WAS brought home from the hospital, it was about six months and two blocks away, a season and a world away.
The month was peachy June, and he was in the arms of a woman who bloomed with motherhood, who was herself born for it. This was her third son too, just like Faye, but Anna Klein was flush, plump, sturdy, and knew she wanted at least one more, maybe two (maybe twins!), before she put up her maternity pants for good. Her pregnancies were fortifying up until those last few heavy, uncomfortable months: thick hair, full bosom, clear complexion. Nausea, yes, always, but the kind of nausea that is charmingly cured by applying sweetened fruit. Candied pineapples, sugared strawberries, syrupy salads of bright coastal oranges or pastel balls of melons, slices of apples that had recently hung like Christmas ornaments in the halls of some Southern orchard. Anna was all natural, a natural; she made having babies look easy.
Two days home from the hospital and she was restless enough for a walk around the block. Babies are certainly cute but they’re dreadful company. Anna usually kept the TV on for company and hopefully for verbal education, because her babies got no goo-goo talk from her. She felt like a fool when she tried, the way she felt trying to interact with a pet. But the TV wasn’t enough that day either.
On a day that called for rain but was holding sunny all afternoon, with her older two boys playing some headless chicken run-around game under the harried watch of their nanny, Anna put baby Raymond in the same old family stroller and took him outside. She waved hi to a few people who were out on their lawns either cussing quietly at their lawn mowers or just getting the mail, but no one who gave her the impression they’d stand still for a conversation.
It wasn’t until she got two blocks down her street and decided to hang a righty to head back home, that she finally spotted Mrs. Rosen out misting her perennials against the so-far rainless day.
A rainbow trembled in the spray from Mrs. Rosen’s hose. The hose was like a ghost detector, Anna’s socially starved brain thought; maybe there were rainbows all around, all the time, and a bright mist of water only revealed them.
Mrs. Rosen finally noticed Anna’s frantic approach, and with a reluctant face turned to speak to her, as if she realized she couldn’t very well throw down the hose and sprint inside now that she’d been spotted.
“How’s that baby?” Mrs. Rosen said, looking down at Ray and leaning over to put his binky back in his mouth (Anna hadn’t noticed that he’d pushed it out and was airing his chubby little tongue around the neighborhood). “And how many does this make again?”
Anna laughed, so relieved to at last be talking to a grown-up. “Number three, another boy! They do seem to be piling up, don’t they?”
Mrs. Rosen nodded slowly, and rubbed a hand across the back of her neck in a masculine gesture. Even then Mrs. Rosen had the short, spiky, iron-colored hair of a woman who’d given up on skirts forever.
“And how is Mr. Klein, happy to have another son? Some men really dislike having too few sons, you know, no matter what they say.” Mrs. Rosen was in her fifties, with three grown-ish daughters and no sons of her own, and everyone knew her husband was having at least one affair. It was making her bitter.
“Oh, busy, you know.” Mr. Klein was second in command behind the CEO of Sears, but his wife knew better than to be ostentatious about his high position. She touched back some of her own long hair, promising herself that she’d never let it be too inconvenient to keep beautiful. “The other morning at breakfast he was a million miles away, stirring his spoon in his coffee like he was ringing a bell, it was driving me crazy! And no matter how many times I said ‘hon, hon’ he never looked up. I finally stuck my head in the freezer trying to muffle the sound.”
Mrs. Rosen smiled tightly and started rolling up her hose. “Better the freezer than the oven, dear.”
Anna wanted to beg her to stay, to keep talking with her please, but only said, “Done watering?”
“No need anymore, here comes that rain.”
Anna turned to where Mrs. Rosen had indicated, over her shoulder like someone might have just walked up behind them to interrupt. The sky was roiling towards them, bubbling up as thick and black as oil out of the ground.
“Oh, shoot, I better run.”
“Want an umbrella?” Mrs. Rosen offered, but Anna was already back on the street, already out of breath enough to have to wave a wordless thanks behind her.
Anna returned to her own street just as the first few drops of rain started hitting the baby. She didn’t coo any comfort to him, just got them both safely inside before it started really coming down. In the time it took her to fold up the stroller and get back into the living room, the whole daylight had changed. Her living room, bright when she left it, now had a very dramatic solar eclipse sort of light.
She popped the baby back into his bouncy chair and circled the living room opening up windows, really putting her shoulder into the task. She wanted to let the noise and the smell of the storm in, listen to the applause of the drops as they flickered around the house, hitting leaves and concrete, drumming the roof.
Anna got nearly thirty seconds of this exhilarating peace before baby Ray took a deep breath and started to howl.
Anna sighed as the nanny came downstairs, a young lady they’d lured out of a local day care center and into private service with better money.
“He’s got a set of pipes on him, doesn’t he? I just put Eric down for his nap and Allen’s in the play room with a movie.”
“Well, see if you can’t do something with this one, he just started with this, probably tired.”
Anna slid the bouncer away from her, and went to close up the windows, since water was starting to spray in through the screens.
“Babies usually sleep to the sound of rain, maybe I can get him to settle down.”
“You do that,” Anna said, staring out at the sopping-wet afternoon. Anna knew that was the last bit of adult conversation she’d have all day.
She closed the curtains on the windows.
3
WHEN NOAH WAS FOUR YEARS old, he drew a furious bird’s nest in crayon that hung on the fridge for nearly two years (and now resides in a file box in the basement labeled NOAH with every report card he’s ever brought home). He had already completed a brief sketch of a house, an impression of a doggy, and a portrait of Mommy. Mommy looked disturbingly unlike herself and more like Noah’s German au pair, Nadine—mostly because of the blond hair. The real Mommy had very dark hair, but the real Mommy also had a torso, not just legs sticking out of her head, so . . . maybe it wasn’t that big a deal.
His current drawing was a very serious rendering of a robin’s nest, not that Noah knew it at the time. With blue circles for eggs already set down, a chaotic brown scribbling was being thatched in for the twigs of the nest. Nadine bustled around the kitchen table as he did this work, stirring up a pitcher of iced tea and constructing a meal for Noah—folding a sandwich together, washing cherry tomatoes, cutting up a hot dog into a pot of macaroni and cheese, most of which would be put into the fridge and served to him for tomorrow and the next day’s lunches as well. She watched Noah work in between doing her own, squinting.
“Tongue is out again,” Nadine told him, touching Noah’s peeking tongue with a thick, salty finger. “I see it again another time, I slap it back in. You look like stupid animal otherwise.”
Noah tucked his tongue back behind his teeth, hating the taste of it now, kind of wanting to suck on one of his crayons, but that would get him a pop on the face for sure. Nadine sat down, stared steadily at Noah, and crossed her arms over her substantial bosom. She tucked one hand into her armpit and rested the other one on the opposite elbow, leaving it poised to strike out should Noah’s tongue reappear. He locked his teeth together as he returned to drawing. The muscles in his cheeks quivered and tightened under his springy young skin.
The stand-off was broken when Mike came through the kitchen—newly bar mitzvahed, taller than he was just a few weeks before, with a deep voic
e that tuned in occasionally for longer and longer stretches. To Noah, Mike was exactly as old as he had always been before, but Nadine took pains to compliment Mike on his new adulthood whenever they crossed paths.
“Ah, here is the handsome man!” The hand that Nadine had prepped for smacking Noah was being used to grasp Mike’s arm, and Noah relaxed back into his work. She would bother Mike for a while now.
“Yeah, hey,” Mike said. His arms were bare, he was in his workout shirt with the sleeves cut off so he could admire his developing muscles, but this meant that Nadine could admire them too.
“Noah, you want to be handsome like your brother someday?” she asked.
“Nein,” Noah said, answering back in Nadine’s native tongue. He could already converse as naturally in German as he could in English, and he sometimes considered German easier. He knew the rest of his family couldn’t understand him in German, and so when Nadine wasn’t around, he could speak aloud and still keep his thoughts private. He liked the feeling of being inscrutable.
“What was that, was that ‘no’?” Mike snorted. “No worries there, baby brother, you look like a frog. Trust me, you’ll have to be rich to get married.”
“He is just a child, he says many of strange things,” Nadine assured Mike. “He loves his big brother.” She pinched Noah’s ear, a little too hard, but he knows why. She just liked Mike so much, everybody did, everybody but Mommy, who seemed to like anyone who would spend time with her, which Noah did. A lot of time, in fact. Mommy told him about birds, about all the prettiest birds, and Mommy was who this picture was for, that was why he concentrated so hard on it. It was important not to let the nest scribble over the eggs, not to mess up how perfectly Noah believed he had gotten those small blue circles. He had almost managed to get it perfect too, when Nadine’s hand clapped onto his face.