Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo (8 page)

“Why?” Maya said.

“They were pretty. They had different colors. Some of them looked like peas with eyes. Others were bigger—they were like the parents of the little ones. They were all there together.”

“But you can't put your head in the water like that, Max. I know you're careful, but even when we're careful, things can go wrong. Do you hear me?”

“I tried to count them without putting my face in, but the water was moving too fast. I can hold air for more than a minute. Papa can tell you. You don't come with us to Mexico, you don't know. If you came with us, you would know.”

“Papa comes with you and he's worried,” Maya said.

“I don't know!” Max shouted. He buried his face inside his blanket and turned to face the wall once again.

Maya gave up her questioning. The headache that she had been, for hours, too upset to notice finally forced her to notice. She rustled Max's arm again, a soft something under the blanket. He
looked back again and they gazed at each other. “Tell me what it was like,” Maya said.

Max scratched his ear pensively like an old man, and his face loosened. “There was a boy there who was sick.”

“Sick? In what way?”

“He said funny things. Ba-ba-baa.”

“Did he scare you?”

“No. I liked him.”

“Did you tell him that?”

“No. Should I have told him?”

“I bet he could tell. I bet he liked you, too. You're very likable. I'm sorry I woke you. I'm sorry I raised my voice just now.”

“I wish I'd told him.”

“Don't be upset that you didn't tell him. I think he knew. Very often, people know what you mean even if you don't say anything.”

“Is Papa mad at me?”

“Papa doesn't know how to be mad at you. But if you want to do that again, you have to tell us. If you want, we can come with you. I will come with you, for sure. Maybe I'll like it, too. Can you promise me that?”

Max nodded. She wanted to believe him, but didn't. “If you're sad,” she went on, “why not come to me? We'll do something together. We'll cook something fun. And if that doesn't work, we'll get the tent back out when Grandpa is gone. And we'll call Oliver, and have a slumber party. And when one of these things makes you not sad anymore, you tell me, and from then on we'll know how to fix it.”

Max didn't say anything, just lay there contemplating her words.

“I'm sorry I woke you,” she said.

“I don't mind. I'll fall asleep right away.”

“Okay,” she said. “Hey, I like your hair this long.”

He started rubbing the heel of a palm in an eye. He kept going, and she forced away his hand. “Come on, you'll make it red,” she
said. But really it was because she was fearful that every strange gesture meant something strange.

“Can I ask something?” he said.

“Of course you can.”

“You were the same age as me once, right?”

She laughed. “Yes, I was, baby. Yes.”

“Were you like me?” he said.

She reached for his shoulder under the blanket. “I don't know,” she said. “I don't remember a lot. My mother—your grandmother—you met her when you were tiny—we spent every day in the summer together. Do you know what we would do? We would go to the department store and buy a box of the cheapest glasses they had. Twenty glasses. Each one had a different fish stenciled on it. Then we dragged this box to the garbage terminal. All the garbage in the city went there. It smelled so bad out there. The men who worked there stopped to stare at us. They were not like regular men—if you worked at the garbage terminal, that meant you couldn't get a job somewhere else. But they weren't mean—just puzzled. They watched as we took the glasses out of the box one by one and threw them at the back wall of the building. They smashed into tiny little pieces.”

Max giggled. “Why did you do that?”

“I don't know, honey. But it was fun. You shouldn't do it with any of our glasses, please. If you want to do it, please tell me—and we'll do it together. Because you're just eight years old. My mama wouldn't let me anywhere by myself for another four years. Do you understand? She would have been so upset if I went off on my own. We can do so much—but together. I like so much being with you. Don't you like it, too?”

Max thought, and, as if truly deciding, nodded.

“When we were done—ten glasses, each of us—my mama went and got a broom from one of the men. They laughed into their mustaches. She swept up the whole mess, put it in one of the
trash bins, and we left. But when we came back the next year, she brought two boxes and she gave one to them.”

Max seemed to be thinking about the story. She sat on the floor next to the bed, watching him.

“Did you ever run away?” Max said.

“No,” she said. “But when I was twelve, my mama sent me to my uncle's for a summer. I really didn't want to go. I wanted to be with her.”

“Did Papa ever run away?” Max said.

“Not exactly. He was playing in the sandbox with a friend once and two men came up to ask for directions to his school. And he volunteered to take them. He walked them all the way. He was lucky because Grandpa Eugene came outside just in time and asked his friend where Papa was. And his friend said. And Grandpa Eugene raced to the school. And he got there just in time.”

“Just in time for what?”

“Just in time for nothing bad to have happened to your father. He was little and he wanted to be nice, but he made a bad decision. When you're little, even if you feel like doing something—even if it's nice—you have to tell your mama and papa. And then it's okay.”

Max considered this information. Maya bent toward her son. “Can I ask you something now?”

He nodded and busied himself with an edge of the blanket, turning it this way and that.

“Were you scared today?” she said. “Was it ever scary?” What she wanted to ask was
Did you worry you wouldn't come back to us?
But she couldn't bring herself to ask that.

Max shrugged. “A little,” he said finally.

They said I love you and touched nose tips—how they said good night. Maya watched Max close his eyes, as if to reassure herself that, indeed, she had not disrupted his sleep lastingly. She took the steps downstairs, where, upon her entry to the kitchen, the conversation stilled.

“How is he?” Alex said.

“He's okay now,” Maya said thickly. “He needs to see a doctor.”

“A doctor?” Alex said.

“He doesn't understand if there's something wrong—and why would he,” she said. “There's a pediatric psychiatrist at the hospital. A wonderful man, Saltz. They know him around the country.”

“And tell him what?” Alex said. “Our son runs off to sit in a river? Take him, take him. He'll tell you that Max suffers from psychotic episodes, multi-personality disorder, whatever you like. He'll put him on—I don't know what it's called, but you know what I'm talking about. Those pills. And then you'll see what fucked-up really means. Your child will never be the same.”

“Sasha!” Raisa said. “If you want to use foul language, please wait till I leave.”

You never leave, Maya nearly said, but silenced herself just in time. Alex held up a hand in apology.

“I'm afraid to leave things as they are,” Maya said. “If not Saltz, we should take him to a psychologist.”

“He can look in a crystal ball to see if Max will ever sleep in a regular bed again,” Eugene said.

“You keep saying we got a bad deal, Eugene,” Maya said. “Should we do something about it or not?” She got out the words, but her appetite for altercation had drifted away.

“So, you want ours to be the family with the boy with the”—Eugene twirled a finger into his temple in a Soviet gesture that meant: not all there.

“I spoke to him very directly,” Raisa said. “I think things are going to be very different now.”

“A psychologist?” Alex said. “And pay two hundred dollars for forty-five minutes? You're overreacting, Maya. Do you know that expression: ‘There are no healthy people, only the undiagnosed'? You go to the doctor, the doctor will find something wrong with you. How else can they make a living?”

“What about Bender?” Raisa said. “Bender might see him for free.”

“Bender in Whippany?” Eugene said, incredulous. “Our Bender?” He meant that Bender was Russian.

“You like to find problems in others' proposals,” Alex said to his father, “but you have none of your own.”

“Boys, please,” Raisa pleaded.

“I am so tired,” Maya said.

“Go to bed, darling,” Raisa said magnanimously.

Maya obeyed. Sometimes, she was grateful for Raisa's mother-like agitation. She mounted the stairs once more, her thighs sore as if she had pedaled and pedaled somewhere, and sat down carefully on the edge of the bed she shared with Alex. She watched the bedside telephone for a long time and finally lifted it, expecting it to feel unbearably dense in her hand. She listened to the dial tone long enough that it failed and the impatient beeping began. She clicked off and on and dialed Nina Benton, the woman on whose property Max had lowered his head inside a creek. The line rang and rang and she was about to give up when finally the receiver clicked and a distracted voice said hello. Maya checked the clock and felt guilty. It was a farm of some kind; surely they rose early. She apologized and quickly gave her name. The voice on the other end asked her to hold it, and then Maya heard threats about tooth-brushing, stories, and bedtime.

“I imagine the kind of night you're having,” the voice came back, now more careful and allied.

“I'm sorry to bother you,” Maya said.

“We're glad he's fine,” she said. “It's the most important.”

Maya asked for detail beyond what Alex had told her, but there was nothing.

“He said you have boys of your own,” Maya said, deflated but not wishing to let go.

“Three,” Nina Benton said.

“A handful,” Maya said enviously.

“Handful because each is disabled.”

“Oh,” Maya said. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be,” the voice said. “They're great boys.”

Maya apologized again. Apparently, she had made her husband's view on handicaps also her own.

“I'm so scared,” she blurted out. Then she apologized a third time. “I'm sorry. I know you can't help me.”

“Now listen to me,” Nina Benton said. “I'm putting you off only because I have to get these boys into bed. We break routine, and all hell goes loose. But you can talk to me. You can call me tomorrow. You want to come here in the afternoon and have coffee, I'll make time.”

“Thank you,” Maya whispered. “I can't drive.” It sounded like a disability of her own. She said another thanks and hung up. She felt envy for the happy bedlam on the other end of the line. Still wearing her clothes, she went down on the bed and collapsed into a deep, hopeless slumber, the soft rumble of the others talking below her. Her final thought was a thanks that the affliction she felt made her want to sleep instead of unable to.

+

His mother having turned to the dishes in the sink and his father to the newspaper that had gone untouched because of Max, Alex left the kitchen and took the stairs toward his son's bedroom. The door creaked slightly when he opened it, and he reminded himself again to oil the hinges. His son—Alex felt encouragement and surprise—was in bed; Alex had kept his skepticism to himself when Raisa had declared, on her return to the kitchen, that the boy had been set up there. (She had paused shyly to give the others a chance to admire her achievement; through the affection only a grandmother could give she had managed to solve the problem.)

Max was six when he'd asked Alex to set up a tent for him to sleep outside. Alex had just finished reading a bedtime story about Arctic explorers; a satisfied silence had descended on the room,
Alex seated in an old armchair and his son interred in a pile of blankets. A lamp burned softly from Max's night table, the honeyed light casting the shadows that signal the decline of the day, a son ready to rest and a wife downstairs finishing the dishes before the adults make the last of the evening. Alex himself had nearly nodded off when Max said, with his customary directness, “Papa, would you build me a tent outside? I want to sleep there.”

Alex felt buoyed by an affirmation of which his son couldn't be aware. Alex and Maya had argued about the language in which Max should receive his bedtime reading. English, said Maya; he was an American. Russian, said Alex; he would get plenty of America elsewhere. Alex and Maya's magnificent homeland could rot in hell, but a second language would only help Max in the future. Alex had won, partly because he did the bedtime reading, but the victory hadn't been satisfactory because the Russian-language books offered a somewhat selective view of history, in which the Arctic—and outer space, and medicine—were conquered exclusively by Russian and Soviet visionaries. But more, not less, Russian was necessary—Max, speaking Russian, had made an elementary mistake: He had said “build,” not “set up,” a tent.

“What?” Alex said. “You want to be like the explorers?”

Max shook his head no, the blond wind chimes swinging to and fro.

“When it gets warm,” Alex said. “There's snow on the ground.”

“If you wrap up, it's not cold,” Max said, and turned away from the light.

Alex sat, turning over this remark, until he realized Max must have been recalling something one of the explorers had done. He rose, kissed his son good night, and went downstairs.

But his son had meant “build.” Compliantly, Max had waited until that year's snow left the ground and was found one April Saturday in the Rubins' backyard, pulling a canvas drop cloth many times his size over a primitive contraption of acacia poles that he had scavenged in the suburban woods beyond the edge of their
property. The drop cloth Max had scavenged from their neighbor Vincenzo, with whom the Rubins were adversarial due to Vincenzo's aggressive curtailment of the pygmy pines Alex had installed on the edge of his lot. To the boy, however, Vincenzo had lent the paint-spattered drop cloth with pleasure, imagining correctly that Max was freelancing and his dickhead father would erupt upon seeing his immaculate lawn staked with poles and a drop cloth with the drippings of ten years of house paint. Max had only had to fill out a chit that the old Italian, smelling of wine, thrust at the parents when they reluctantly came to inquire. Vincenzo fermented wine in a shed at the edge of his lot, and though he offered none to the Rubins, he shared with pleasure the swarming insects the process attracted; Maya was convinced Vincenzo was to blame for the hornets that had descended on Max on the deck when he was a toddler.