Mister Monkey

by Francine Prose

  He wonders if Margot’s out on a date, or with friends, or having dinner alone. Maybe she’s ordered takeout. Is she thinking about him? He would give anything just to see the inside of her apartment. Is her kitchen like theirs? Does she have a scary view?

  “I don’t know,” says Mom. “It just seemed funny for a second. Aren’t I allowed to have even one nice memory?”

  He and his mother take their seats at the counter, and for a few moments it’s almost pleasant with the lights dimmed low, their faces damp with fragrant steam rising from the pasta.

  Adam knows the right thing to say: the pasta is delicious. And he knows the wrong thing to say, which is what he says:

  “Hey, what about that sucky little kid asking his grandpa if he was interested?” It’s a test. A normal mother would say “What a brat!” and go back to eating her pasta.

  But his mother fails that test. His mom says, “The kid was sitting right next to me. He was shouting in my ear.” Then she puts down her fork, leans on the table, and lets her chin sink into her hands.

  “I’m sorry,” Adam says.

  “Why should you be sorry?” his mom says thickly. “You did nothing wrong.”

  Oh, if she only knew! If she only knew that today, during the matinee, her sweet darling son had weird transgressive public sex with one of his costars. Does Mom know? Adam hopes not. It’s alarming how often she knows things about him that he never told her. He stares at her, searching for a sign. But Mom has her eyes closed. At first he thinks it’s because she’s enjoying the pasta, until he realizes that she’s crying. From behind the granny glasses tears slip down her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry.” She weeps quietly for a while. She should be on medication. Derek’s mom is, and it’s helped. Adam has asked his dad to bring up the subject with Mom, and Dad said that he’s the last person who could have that conversation with her.

  The mood is spoiled. The pasta tastes like crap. Adam puts his dish in the sink.

  “I think I’ll have another little taste,” says Mom. “And maybe a drop more wine.”

  Adam says, “Good night, Mom,” and goes to his room, though it’s still early.

  He lies down and opens On the Origin of Species, an antique edition his mom found in a used-book shop. Its dark green cover sheds red velvet crumbs, revealing a rust-colored layer beneath. The title is stamped on the spine in gold.

  Adam reads, “We shall best understand the probable cause of natural selection by taking the case of a country undergoing slight physical change, for instance, of climate. The proportional numbers of its inhabitants will almost immediately undergo a change, and some species will probably become extinct.”

  After a while, Adam hears the super-gloomy Miles Davis track that Mom plays to put herself to sleep. Probably she is asleep. What could be more depressing? He walks into the living room where he discovers that Mom has opened the drapes he made a point of closing. Does she want the whole world to see that nothing fun—correction: nothing—is happening in their apartment? Does she want the terrorist pilots deciding that theirs is the window they should crash into?

  The round gigantic moon reminds him of the lights they use for interrogation and surgery—and torture—on TV. He raises his arms, Mister Monkey style. Mother, can you hear me? Not with that sad-ass trumpet blaring.

  He no longer wants to go to the moon. The moon doesn’t want him there. The moon wants to be left alone. Who can blame it? But no, what the moon really wants is to fuck with Earth, to churn up the tides and winds and water. Tsunami time!

  Adam gazes at the sparkling skyline of scenic New Jersey, then out at the harbor. He watches the dark storm clouds thicken, split by zigzags of lightning like furry black broken hearts. Marionette strings of moonbeams yank at the waves until the current boils up, splashing over the sidewalk, licking the trees. Now only the points of the Statue of Liberty’s crown are visible, poking holes in the clouds through which the rain sheets down. Fish ride the swollen river, which dumps them on the rooftops, where they flop around, gasping and dying, until swarms of hungry seagulls swoop down, and a red curtain of fish blood and guts slicks Adam’s windows. It’s messy, but he can see through it. He sees something on the horizon, pitching and rocking on the waves.

  It’s an ocean liner. Though Adam knows better, he thinks, Look! It’s Noah’s ark! Two of every species, culled and saved to replace the drowned and repopulate the planet.

  Sorry! He’s read his Darwin. The earth’s inhabitants will undergo a change. Species will become extinct. Humans will be the first to go. Then who is on the boat? Space aliens with opaque almond eyes? Amphibious creatures with blue skin and hair, fins and water wings? Adam—in some other, superior, more efficiently adapted life-form?

  The boat floats under his window, where the water has risen so high that Adam can look inside the portholes. In the elegant dining room, tables are set with silver, china, and crystal goblets. Chandeliers glitter above the dance floor, but no one is dancing or sitting in the deck chairs draped with plaid blankets. It’s as if the Titanic’s been struck again, this time by a neutron bomb. So that’s it. The end. It’s over.

  Grief wells up inside him. It is so unfair! He’s still a kid. He hasn’t had his life yet. Let this happen to the selfish shithead grown-ups who caused the problems in the first place.

  The only thing that comforts him is the memory of how good it felt when Margot had her arms around him, and he pressed his hips against her. He wonders if that feeling could save him from the storm, if it could pluck him out of the end of the world and lift him above the flood.

  And if the world doesn’t end tonight? He has to see Margot again.

  Closing his eyes, he begins to pray. Please don’t let the world end. Please don’t let the planet die. Please don’t let Margot hate me.

  [ CHAPTER 3 ]

  THE GRANDFATHER

  AFTER THE PLAY, a disheveled little man, needing a shave, wearing sweatpants and a saggy yellowed T-shirt, blocks their path and shakes first the grandfather’s hand, then the child’s. The grandfather recognizes the director, who’d appeared onstage to take a bow, though the cast of Mister Monkey hadn’t beckoned him to join them, as actors often do.

  He thanks the grandfather and the child for coming to the play.

  “Thank you,” says the grandfather. “We enjoyed it immensely.” The child is looking at him, as if he has caught him in a lie. Then the three of them stand there until a woman in a gypsy skirt, a fringed shawl, and a long gray braid approaches the director and sets them free.

  “I was being polite,” the grandfather explains, though he isn’t sure if the child’s expression was accusing or simply curious. The child is naturally polite, not counting sometimes, like today, when he forgets that someone might be listening. Grandpa, are you interested in this? Should he talk to the child about being quiet in a theater?

  Outside, the audience has dispersed, except for a tourist couple studying a map and a short thin boy standing off to one side and glaring at the grandfather and the child in a way that makes the grandfather uneasy. Something about the jittery way he’s bouncing on his feet reminds the grandfather of Mister Monkey, and though the grandfather knows it’s probably just paranoia, he is suddenly afraid that the boy is the actor, and that he recognizes his grandson as the one who asked if he was interested.

  The grandfather wants to explain to the boy who played the monkey, if that’s who he is, that his grandchild, in all innocence, simply wanted to know. It would be harder to explain that the grandfather heard in the child’s question the voice of his wife, calling his name in the night, because she’d woken from a nightmare and was in pain and needed to know that he was there. The child was waking from a dream of an orphan monkey in danger.

  The grandfather is not going to say anything like that to the boy, who might not even be the person he thinks he is. He doesn’t want to embarrass his grandson. But the kid’s stare is so hostile that, after they walk away, the grandf
ather turns to see if they’re being followed.

  The grandfather hasn’t been feeling well. Lately he’s had some chest pain and a few dizzy spells. He’s obviously not himself if he imagines that a gloomy boy is going to harm them.

  “Did you like the play?” asks the grandfather. Sometimes he feels as if he and the child are on a first date and he’s desperate to make conversation.

  The child nods. “I’m hungry and thirsty.” He’s not demanding to be fed but merely stating a fact. Another kid might pout or whine. The child’s mother used to. The grandfather must have been patient, or patient enough, because his daughter has turned out well. She’s happily married, a loving mother, with work—she’s a public defender—she respects and enjoys. Being with his grandson is more exciting than it was to be with his daughter when she was little, but even his most lighthearted moments with the little boy are marred by hopeless yearning. Because the force of the grandfather’s love can never be returned, because the child is who he is, because the grandfather is who he is, and because it would go against the natural order for the child to be as obsessed with him as he is with the child.

  “We’re pretty far west,” the grandfather says.

  “Look, Grandpa. Over there.” The child points across the street at a Korean deli. “Could I please have potato chips and a soda?”

  A girl in a neon-chartreuse blouse, a black miniskirt, boots, and a bicycle helmet struts past them, pumping her arms. The child and the grandfather stop to watch a yellow scooter driven by an elderly cowboy in a Stetson hat, bare-chested but for a beaded vest. Is the child glad that man’s not his grandpa? That’s not how the child thinks.

  In the store, they head for the refrigerated drinks section and the child gets a Coke, which his parents won’t let him have. The grandfather is thirsty and would love some cold water, but when he’s with the child on the street and the subway, he feels that he needs to have both hands free. He can wait to drink some water until they get to his daughter and son-in-law’s apartment.

  The child takes the grandfather’s arm and guides him to the rack of chips, near the register. The child is not by nature affectionate, not physically warm. The grandfather sometimes thinks of the child as his unhappy love affair.

  The intensity of the child’s focus on the bags of chips grabs the grandfather’s heart and squeezes it, playfully, but in a bullying way, not letting him breathe till it stops. Pangs of love. He hopes. He should probably see his internist. Dr. Groeder wasn’t great with Jane, at the end, and a distance opened between them.

  The child looks up at the grandfather. Must he decide in a hurry? The grandfather steps aside so he and the child won’t hold up the line. The grandfather is ashamed of his desire to instruct the child, though he feels that is part of his job.

  He no longer remembers why he chose that play. Maybe because the tickets were cheap. He has taken the child to the theater several times. So far their favorite show featured a troupe of teenage acrobats, kids from a circus school in a Rio favela, hip-hop trapeze artists and high-wire walkers performing without a net. He and the child still talk about it, another secret kept from the child’s parents, who might worry that their son would try a stunt like that on his own. Maybe that’s why he chose Mister Monkey. He’d read that the title role was being played by a child gymnast: by the boy outside the theater.

  “What’s wrong, Grandpa?” says the child.

  “Nothing. Why do you ask?”

  “You look a little . . . funny,” says the child.

  “I’m fine. Really.”

  Soon after he’d bought the tickets he’d told the child that Mister Monkey was based on a book. The grandfather read Mister Monkey aloud, two or three chapters at a time until the child lost interest. The grandfather didn’t like the book either. It seemed obvious and preachy, full of improving lessons about race and class, honesty, justice, and some kind of . . . spirituality, for want of a better word. It seemed almost as if Mister Monkey were a stand-in for some sort of god.

  Though the child is only in kindergarten, he already knows how to read quite well. But he refuses to read in front of other people. It’s private, he says, a word that is sacrosanct in the child’s home. Mommy and Daddy are having private time. Could you do private things? The grandfather loves his daughter and son-in-law and mostly approves of how they are raising the child. But they lie to their son, lies of language. Private. Special. Grown-up. That’s a grown-up drink. Their childless friends are child free.

  One thing the grandfather can offer the child is the promise that he will never lie to him. Unlike your parents, he almost said once. But if he’d been disloyal, the child would have thought less of him. He’d lied to the child in the theater. He’d said he was interested in the play. Not a lie of language. A lie of interpretation.

  He had been interested, though not in the sense that the child most likely meant. How could anyone not have been interested in that cast and their manic desperation? The two teenagers and the kid in the monkey suit might have been having fun, and the pretty, redheaded woman who played the father’s lying, treacherous girlfriend seemed to be enjoying herself. But the other actors and presumably the director never expected that they would wind up doing that play—in that theater. Whatever they’d hoped to achieve in their careers certainly wasn’t that.

  The grandfather had been particularly interested in the actress in the purple suit, a few years older than his daughter and an obvious mental wreck. Her wretchedness should have made him feel sorry for her instead of better about his daughter and himself. He must have been a good father: his daughter hasn’t wound up like that!

  The child stands on tiptoe to put the chips and soda on the counter.

  “No BBQ?” says the cashier, a handsome African-American guy, all Maori-tattooed biceps and sweetness, the kind of man whom kids look up to. “No cheddar and garlic? No jalapeño?”

  “I don’t like flavors,” the child says. The grandfather feels a twinge in his chest, a bright star of pride and pain.

  “Me neither,” the grandfather says.

  “Me neither,” says the clerk.

  The cashier is a test case. Maybe he has younger siblings, but at this point in his life, the grandfather’s willing to bet, he has no interest in kids. Maybe he’s even scared of them—anxious about the trap they represent. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the handsome deli clerk with a baby carriage. The grandfather can remember when having children seemed like punishment: the dire consequences of sex.

  But even the cashier is impressed by the child. It’s not just the adoring grandpa who notices that the boy is a beauty.

  “What’s your name, little man?” asks the clerk.

  “Tony,” says the child. The grandfather stares at him, shocked. The child’s name is Edward. Early on, his parents made it clear that he was not to be called Ed or Eddie.

  “Pleased to meet you, Tony,” says the clerk. “I’m Eduardo.”

  Almost like your name! the grandfather almost says. Edward’s a great name! See? But that would mean calling the child a liar, exposing him and ruining everything. Maybe forever.

  “Hi, Eduardo.” With his enormous dark eyes and long lashes, the child reminds the grandfather of his own father, who died when he was twelve; his father was thirty-six years younger than the grandfather is now. There is never a moment when the grandfather has to stop and calculate how long he has outlived his father; he always knows.

  He has seen the world take notice of the child’s delicacy and self-possession. He has been reprimanded by his daughter for telling the child that he is beautiful. The child’s parents fear that he may attract the wrong kind of attention, or that he will take advantage of something unearned; that he will learn to use the gift of beauty for leverage or as a shortcut to getting what he wants. The grandfather has a different fear: that the child’s beauty will incur some sort of bad luck. The grandfather thinks, I’ve become a superstitious old man.

  Watching the cle
rk watch the child, the grandfather thinks, The child will grow up to be a lot of people’s unhappy love affairs. It’s not that the child is cold. When sadness engulfs the grandfather, the child comes and rests his head against the grandfather’s shoulder. But only for a moment, and if the grandfather so much as ruffles his hair, the child drifts away.

  Fortunately those onslaughts of sadness are growing less frequent. The year before the child was born was the worst in the grandfather’s life. He’d lost his job at the museum, though everyone agreed that he was smart for taking the generous buyout that would have been foolish to refuse. No one predicted that Jane would die before she could help spend the buyout money.

  “Grandpa,” says the child. “Are you okay? You paid already. Let’s go.”

  “Stay fresh, little man,” the store clerk says.

  “You too,” says the child.

  “You want me to open that soda for you?” says the clerk.

  “My grandpa can do it,” says the child.

  “Are you good with that, Grandpa?” the cashier says.

  “I’m good,” the grandfather replies.

  He kneels in front of the child and twists off the cap and hands it to the child and manages to get back on his feet without tipping over. Again he wishes that he’d gotten a bottle of cold water. Well, fine, he can make it. If the train comes reasonably soon, it’s forty minutes to his daughter’s apartment. If necessary, he can ask for some of the child’s Coke. The child has a generous nature. The grandfather wouldn’t love him less if he were one of those children whose every other word is mine. Even if the grandfather drank his entire soda, the child would try to find it funny. Crazy Grandpa.

  The child takes a long swig of Coke, swallows, and grabs a handful of chips.

  “Chew slowly,” the grandfather says. “You have all the way home to finish.”

  The child holds on to the chips, the grandfather takes the Coke, and with his free hand grabs the child’s hand.