Lunar Park (21 page)

“Nadine,” I called out. I was staggering after her.

I followed her up the stairs and tried to reach out for her but she was moving too quickly, bounding up the steps leading out of the courtyard until she reached the top, where Jayne was standing, waiting.

Nadine glanced at my wife and smiled, then moved swiftly toward the library.

Jayne nodded back amiably. There was nothing accusatory in Jayne’s stance—she was simply stifling a yawn, and she furrowed her brow only briefly when Nadine ignored her. At the sight of Jayne, my dream began returning, and as I stumbled over the top step I reached out and, letting the dream flow back over me, wrapped my arms around her, not caring when she refused to return the embrace.

And on the drive back to the house on Elsinore Lane, above the dashboard and out the windshield, visible in the wide horizon of darkness, I was seeing newly planted citrus trees that were appearing along the interstate, and the citrus trees kept flashing by, along with the occasional wild palm, their fronds barely visible in the blue mist, and the scent of the Pacific Ocean had somehow entered the Range Rover along with Elton John singing “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” even though the radio wasn’t on, and then there was an exit ramp and the sign above it read
SHERMAN OAKS
in shimmering letters, and I thought about the city I had abandoned on the West Coast and realized there was no need to point this out to my wife, who was driving, because the windshield suddenly was splintered by rain, obscuring the palm trees now lining the highway everywhere and, above them, the geometry of a constellation from a distant time zone, and I also realized that there was no need to point this out to Jayne because, in the end, I was only the passenger.

14. the kids

A
s I moved slowly up the stairs toward Robby’s room I could hear the muffled sounds of bullets ripping into zombies emanating from what I thought was his computer. At the top of the stairs I paused, confused, because his door was open, which it never was, and then I realized that since Jayne and I had walked into the house without speaking to each other (she just slipped silently away from me, carrying the complimentary stress basket into Marta’s office) Robby hadn’t heard us come in. Moving closer to the open door, I hesitated again, because I didn’t want to surprise him. I peered cautiously into the room and the first thing I noticed was Sarah lying on his bed gazing dully at something while cradling the Terby. Robby sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV, his back to me, maneuvering a joystick as he caromed down another darkened corridor in another medieval castle. As I stared into the room my immediate thought: the furniture was aligned as it had been in my boyhood room in Sherman Oaks. The formation was identical—the bed placed next to the wall adjacent to the closet, the desk beneath the window that overlooked the street, the television on a low table next to a shelf containing stereo equipment and books. My room had been much smaller and less elaborate (I didn’t have my own refrigerator) but the beige earth tones of the color scheme were exact, and even the lamps resting on the nightstands on both sides of the bed were distinct replicas of the ones I had, though the kitsch factor of Robby’s was now considered cool, whereas my lamps from the midseventies were the epitome of a now distant and tacky chic. I let go of the decades separating Robby’s room from mine and returned to the present when my gaze fell on his computer. On the screen, surrounded by text, was the face of a boy, and the boy looked familiar (in a few seconds I realize it’s Maer Cohen), and the face caused me to quietly enter the room unobserved until Sarah looked away from the TV and said, “Daddy, you’re home.”

Robby froze and then stood up quickly, dropping the joystick carelessly to the floor. Without looking at me he walked over to the computer and tapped a key, erasing the face of (I was now certain) Maer Cohen. And when Robby turned around his eyes were bright and alert, and I was so disarmed by his smile that I almost backed out of the room. I started to smile back but then realized: he was putting on a performance. He wanted to distract me from what was on that screen and he was now putting on a performance. Any hint of last night’s cry of “I hate you” had vanished, and it was hard not to stare at him with suspicion—but how much of that belonged to me, and how much of it belonged to Robby? There was an expectant silence.

“Hi,” Robby said. “How was it?”

I didn’t know what to say. I was now my father. Robby was now me. I saw my own features mirrored in his—my world was mirrored there: the brownish auburn hair, the high and frowning forehead, the thick lips pursed together always in thought and anticipation, the hazel eyes swirling with barely contained bewilderment. Why hadn’t I noticed him until he was lost to me? I lowered my head. It took a moment to process what he was referring to. I just shrugged and said, “It was . . . fine.” Another pause during which I realized I was still staring at the computer he was now blocking. Robby looked over his shoulder, a pointed gesture that was a reminder for me to end this interruption and leave.

I shrugged again. “Um, I just wanted to check if you guys had, y’know, brushed your teeth yet.” This inquiry was so lame, so unlike me, that I blushed at the inappropriateness of it.

Robby nodded, standing in front of the computer, and said, “Bret, I was watching something about the war tonight, and I need to know something.”

“Yeah?” I wanted him to be genuinely interested in whatever he “needed” to know, but I knew he wasn’t. There was something off about his curiosity, something vengeful. Yet I wanted to make contact so badly that I let myself believe he wasn’t distracting me from something he didn’t want me to know. “What is it, Rob?” I tried to sound concerned but my voice was flat.

“Will I be drafted?” he asked, cocking his head, as if he sincerely wanted an answer from me.

“Um, I really don’t think so, Robby,” I said, moving in slow motion to the bed Sarah was lying on. “I’m not even sure if the draft exists anymore.”

“But they’re talking about bringing it back,” he said. “And what if the war’s still going on when I turn eighteen?”

My mind fumbled around until it reached: “The war won’t last that long.”

“But what if it does?”

He was now the teacher, and I was the student being manipulated, so I had to sit down on the edge of the bed in order to concentrate more fully on how this scene was playing out. This was the first time since I moved in that Robby was engaging me in a conversation of any kind, and when I tried to find a reason my stomach dropped: What if Ashton Allen had gotten in touch with him? What if Ashton had warned him about Nadine finding the alleged e-mails? My eyes were darting around the room looking for clues. I saw the two boxes half-filled with clothes marked
SALVATION ARMY
and swallowed hard, fighting off the small and rising panic I was becoming used to. I realized that this had been a scene so rehearsed that I could predict the last lines. I looked back at Robby and couldn’t help feeling that behind the indifference was disgust, and beyond the disgust, rage.

He seemed to notice my suspicions when I found myself staring at the boxes, and he asked, more urgently, “But what if it does, Dad?”

My gaze jumped back at him. The “Dad” did not sound right. He was playing a game, and my instinct was to play along, since that was the only way I was going to find any answers. I wanted to crush the phony specifics and get at some larger truth—whatever it was. I didn’t want to accept anything from him under a false pretense; I wanted him to be genuine with me. But even if he was just going through the motions, he had still initiated a conversation and I wanted to keep it moving.

“Well, you don’t want to . . . die for your country,” I said slowly, thoughtfully.

At the word “die” Sarah stopped playing with the doll and looked over at me worriedly.

“Well, then what should I do?” he asked casually, unconcerned. “If I’m drafted into the army?”

A long pause while I formulated my answer. I tried to come up with simple, practical advice, but when I glanced back at the Salvation Army boxes I suddenly hardened and decided not to play the game anymore. I cleared my throat and, staring straight at him, I said, “I’d run away.”

At the moment I said this whatever false light was animating Robby went out in an instant, and before I could reframe my answer he had already shut down.

He knew I was daring him. He kept standing in front of the computer and I wanted to tell him he could step away, that the face of the missing boy was gone and he didn’t need to block what wasn’t there anymore. Helplessly, I looked at Sarah—who was whispering to the doll—and then back at Robby.

“Why is your sister in here?” I asked quietly.

Robby shrugged. He had already lapsed into his usual silence, and his eyes had become speculative and cold.

“I’m scared.” Sarah tightly hugged the Terby.

“Of what, honey?” I asked, about to move closer to her, even though the presence of the Terby kept me at a distance.

“Are there monsters in our house, Daddy?”

This was Robby’s cue to move away from the computer—the moonscape was now pulsing from the screen—and his confidence that I would become locked in a conversation with his sister relaxed him enough that he sat back down on the floor and recrossed his legs and resumed playing the video game.

“No, no . . .” I shivered as my mind flashed on the rush of images I had dreamt since Halloween. “Why do you ask that, honey?”

“I think there are monsters in the house.” She said this in a thick, drugged voice while hugging the doll.

I wasn’t aware I had said “Well, maybe sometimes, honey, but—” until her face crumpled and suddenly she burst into tears.

“Honey, no, no, no, but they’re not real, honey. They’re make-believe. They can’t hurt you.” I said this even as my eyes took in the black doll in her arms and all the things I knew it was capable of, and then I noticed that the doll didn’t have claws anymore. They had grown, and warped; they were talons now, and they were stained brown. I began formulating plans to get rid of the thing as soon as possible.

Sarah somehow knew that there were monsters in the house—because she now lived in the same house that I did—and she knew that there was nothing I could do about it. She understood that I couldn’t protect her. And at that point I realized the grim fact that as hard as you try, you can hide the truth from children for only an indefinite period, and even if you do tell them the truth, and lay out the facts for them honestly and completely, they will still resent you for it. Sarah’s spasm of crying ended as quickly as it began when the Terby suddenly gurgled and rotated its head toward me, almost as if it didn’t want this particular conversation to continue. I knew Sarah had somehow activated the doll but I had to clench my fist to keep from crying out and moving away, because it seemed so intently to be listening to us. Sarah smiled miserably and held the doll’s grotesque beak (the beak that nibbled flowers at midnight and gutted the squirrels that had been found strewn across the deck—but it was just a matrix of sensors and chips, right?) to her ear as if it had asked her to. She cradled the thing tenderly, with such uncommon gentleness that with any other toy it would have moved me, but at the sight of this thing my stomach dropped yet again. And then Sarah looked up and whispered hoarsely, “He says his real name is Martin.”

(
“Grandpa talked to me . . .”
)

“Oh . . . yeah?” I whispered back, my throat constricted.

“He told me to name him that.” She kept whispering.

I could do nothing but stare at the thing. From outside, as if on cue, we could hear Victor barking, and then he stopped.

“Is Terby alive, Daddy?”

(
Go ahead, look at the scab on your palm. It had gone for the wrong hand, Bret. It was aiming for the hand with the gun in it, but it bit the wrong hand.
)

“Why?” I asked hesitantly. “Do you think he is?” My voice was quavering.

She held the doll up to her ear and listened carefully to it and then she looked back up at me.

“He says he knows who you are.”

This forced me to speak up quickly. “Terby’s not real, honey. It’s not a real pet. It’s not alive.” I was intensely aware that I was still glaring at the thing, shaking my head slowly back and forth as if consoling myself.

Sarah held the doll up to her ear once again as if it asked her to.

I restrained myself from grabbing it away from her (I could smell its rotten scent) as she sat up to listen more carefully to what the doll was telling her. And then she nodded and looked back up at me.

“Terby says not in a human way but”—and now she giggled—“in a Terby way.”

She clutched the thing, rocking back and forth, delighted.

I said nothing and looked to Robby for help, but he was lost in the video game or pretending to be, and over the sounds of gunfire and groans I could hear Marta’s car pulling out of the driveway.

“Terby knows things,” Sarah whispered.

I kept swallowing. “What . . . things?”

“Everything he wants to know,” she said simply.

“Honey, it’s time for you to go to sleep,” I said, and then, looking over at Robby, “And I want you to turn that off and go to bed too, Robby. It’s late.”

“You don’t need to worry about me getting enough sleep,” he muttered.

“But it’s my job to worry,” I said.

He turned away from the television and glared at me. “About who?”

“Well,” I said in a tender voice. “About you, bud.”

He muttered something else and turned back to the TV screen.

I had heard what he said. And even though I did not want him to repeat it, I couldn’t help myself.

“What did you say, Rob?”

And then he repeated it without difficulty or shame.

“You’re not my father so don’t boss me around.”

“What are you . . . talking about?”

“I said”—and now he spoke very clearly, his back still to me—“you’re not my father, Bret.”

I was so weakened by this admission—something resentful that had been building up for a long time—and the entire day leading up to it that I was rendered silent. I was exhausted. I carefully stood up from the bed when Jayne entered the room and Sarah shouted out “Mommy!” and instead of saying,
I am your father, Robby, and I always have been and I always will be
I simply floated out of his realm, letting their mother replace me.

I walked down the hallway, the wall sconces flickering as I passed, and went into the master bedroom, closing the door behind me, and then I leaned against it, and for one brief, awful moment I had no idea who I was or where I was living or how I had ended up on Elsinore Lane, and I checked my jacket pocket for the Xanax that was always there and swallowed two, and then, very carefully and with great purpose, began undressing. I pulled a robe over the boxer shorts and T-shirt I was wearing and then I stepped into my bathroom and closed the door and started to weep about what Robby had said to me. After about thirty minutes passed and I came out of the bathroom, I simply said to Jayne, who was standing in front of a full-length mirror inspecting her thighs (cellulite paranoia), “I’m sleeping in here tonight.” She made no response. Rosa had already folded down the sheets and Jayne, wearing a T-shirt and white panties, slipped into bed and hid herself under the covers. I stood in the middle of the vast room, letting the Xanax wash through my system until I felt calm enough to say, “I want Sarah to get rid of that thing.”

Jayne reached for a script that lay on the nightstand and ignored me.

“I want her to get rid of that doll.”

“What?” she asked irritably. “What are you talking about now?”

“There’s something . . . unwholesome about that thing,” I said.

“What are you overreacting to now?” She flipped the script open and stared at it intently. It occurred to me that I couldn’t remember what day she was leaving for Toronto this week.