Something Happened (29 page)

He is a good-looking son, kind and inquisitive, and everyone likes him (or seems to. You never can tell with people. Although he can. I know I do). He has fine, sandy hair, a sense of humor impish and intelligent, and pale, slight shoulders and arms.
He is not strong. He is slim. His health is good. (We are pleased with him. My daughter is pleased with him now too, although she used to be envious and nasty, and we all enjoy talking about him to others.) It is like pulling teeth from him sometimes to get him to complain. (We tend to think of him as happy and to diagnose his occasional episodes of disobedience, resistance, or distress as symptoms of fatigue or sore throat and fever or as normal lapses into tolerable, childish misconduct.) He is a good little boy and always has been. He is, as my wife or I reflect aloud with pride on occasions, almost too good to be true (and he isn’t! Something’s wrong, and I think I have always known it, although I have never been brave enough to say so or even to face the thought without diverging from it in haste. All my wife worries about is that he not grow up to be a homosexual, although there is not a single reason to suspect he will. I worry about that only a little.

“He’s being good just to spite me!” my daughter will allege impulsively in his presence during some of those playful or tempestuous disputes one or the other is always instigating, sometimes in humor, sometimes with virulence. “Nobody is that
good
all the time.”

“Lesbo,” he retorts winningly.

And we are all compelled to chuckle in affectionate appreciation, although my wife is not certain such language is appropriate in front of us or healthy or proper for either one of our children to use, or even know).

But something
is
wrong, I think, although I have always kept my chilling doubts to myself (as though by not taking notice of anything unpleasant that might be emerging, it will go away. There are people who believe they cure their own cancers that way. My wife. Something bad is going to happen to him. I know that now. I know it will. And something bad is going to happen to me too, because it does happen to him. Perhaps it is happening to him already. I think it is. It started far back) with the foolish, unarticulated prayer that (primarily for
my
benefit, rather than his) it would heal itself adequately by
and by and spare me the anguish and difficulty of having to deal with it, or at least that it would remain dormant and undetected by anyone else until I have lived out my allotted three score years and ten in joy, prosperity, and fullest contentment (ha, ha. And am dead, of natural causes) and can no longer be harmed by whatever tragedy it is that pains and cripples him severely (I can’t stand pain) or strikes him down fatally. I am skeptical about my chances, for I have noticed that people tend to grow up pretty much the way they began; and hidden somewhere inside every bluff or quiet man and woman I know, I think, is the fully formed, but uncompleted, little boy or girl that once was and will always remain as it always has been, suspended lonesomely inside its own past, waiting hopefully, vainly, to resume, longing insatiably for company, pining desolately for that time to come when it will be safe and sane and possible to burst outside exuberantly, stretch its arms, fill its lungs with invigorating air, without fear at last, and call:

“Hey! Here I am. Couldn’t you find me? Can’t we be together now?”

And hiding inside of me somewhere, I know (I feel him inside me. I feel it beyond all doubt), is a timid little boy just like my son who wants to be his best friend and wishes he could come outside and play.

On the positive side, he seems to be outgrowing his fear of bees, spiders, caterpillars, crabs, and jellyfish, he tells me, and I want very much to believe him.

“I am,” he repeats, insistently. “The last time I saw a bee I didn’t even want to move away.”

“But were you afraid?” I question him closely. “Did the bee come near you?”

“I was with someone,” he admits.

He is marvelous at math and good at science, but no longer cares to excel in either (to the chagrin of his teachers, who express disappointment with him. He is puzzled by their disapproval). Mixed in with all his confusion, I’m sure, is an unresolved
Oedipal conflict of staggering dimensions and attendant horrifying castration fears (mine, of course), but he is still too young, ha, ha, to be bothered by any of
that
stuff now.

He thinks (I think) that he is much smaller than he actually is. I think he thinks he is funny looking and disappointing and that we want to abandon him, take him somewhere far, and leave him there. For what reason we should want to do this he doesn’t know; he doesn’t say. (Maybe he believes we want to abandon him because we think he’s too small. He isn’t small. He is average, and only seems small in comparison to boys his age who are taller. He is a little small, and it’s no use telling him he isn’t.)

It used to be that when we brought him someplace he had never been before, or even to certain places he had been, to somebody’s home, or to a public place that was deserted or one that was noisy and crowded (dark or bright didn’t matter. He didn’t like crowds; he didn’t like emptiness. Or the taking him there. Or taking him anywhere. When we went, he was not convinced we were going where we told him we were going until we got there and not sure when we were there that we intended to bring him back), he would maneuver craftily to keep his shoulder or hand against my wife or me, persevere at remaining in physical touch with one or the other of us, at least until he had scrutinized his surroundings and us to his satisfaction and concluded that the time had not yet come (that it was not yet the occasion of his doom. Sentence had already been passed. Only the moment of execution remained in doubt). He wants to hold on tight to what he knows he has (even though he is far from pleased by what he knows he has). He does not want to lose us. He does not want to be alone, not even at home, and usually leaves the door to his room open. He doesn’t spend much time inside it. (He is disturbed when he comes upon doors to other rooms in the house that are closed. The door to my daughter’s room is always closed, almost as a flamboyant gesture of spite. Ours may be open or
closed. And evenings and mornings when my wife and I make love, or one of us thinks there’s a possibility we might, it is closed. We don’t feel we want anybody to watch. Group sex will never be for us.) He does not want to be with people he doesn’t trust; and he does not trust people he has not known long. He does not always trust us. (So who else does he have?) He would take hold of our hands and be unwilling to let go. We were often embarrassed. We made him let go.

“Let go,” we would coax. “Let go of my hand. Please let go now.”

The blood would drain from his cheeks and lips (which would turn blue. His lips would take on a bluish tinge when he was very tense). He would tremble, swallow, and gag; especially if, after forcing him to let go, we then also forced him to go off somewhere alone to play or told him to sit in one place while we moved out of sight to another. He always hung back an instant with a sickened, pleading look whenever we told him to go off someplace and play. So we stopped. (He would not want anyone to see his painful apprehension, even while baring it to us. We have stopped making him come with us to places he does not want to go. He has the choice of remaining home without us. My daughter is usually too busy now to devote much attention to him.) He is always saddened and disconcerted when one of our Black maids or white nurses leaves (even though he might not like her. He usually does not like them and wants no more to do with them than he has to). He feels we may be planning to get rid of him the same way.

“Do you want to get rid of Derek?” he has asked.

“No,” I have lied.

“Do you want to get rid of me?”

“No. Why should we want to do that?”

“Do you want to get rid of anyone?”

“No.”

“People who work for you?”

“No. Just one. Why should we want to get rid of you? You’re too good.”

“Suppose I wasn’t?”

“You’d still be too good.”

“Sometimes,” he confesses ruefully, with a soft (perhaps tricky) smile, “I dream at night that I’m all alone someplace and I don’t know where to go. And I cry. When I wake up, my eyes are wet. Sometimes,” he continues humbly, now that he has decided to tell, “I’m not even asleep when I have this dream.”

His look is sad when he finishes, and he waits in silence for my answer with a searching, sagacious air.

(I do not know anymore whether he tells me things like this because they are true, or because he observes how strongly they affect me. Mistrust and acrimony are starting to cloud my emotions toward him. More and more frequently, I am incited to react toward him contentiously and competitively, the way I do toward my daughter. I try not to.

“Are you angry?” he will ask.

“No,” I will lie.)

Or, as he asked of us one day when we dressed him in a shirt, knitted tie, and jacket to take him to what we told him was the circus (it
was
to the circus, although he did not seem to believe it, and he looked so lovable, wholesome, and neat in the pink tattersall shirt I had bought for him in the Boys’ Shop at Brooks Brothers and miniature blue blazer we had also bought him from Brooks Brothers, with his shiny, silken hair—which was his own and not from Brooks Brothers, ha, ha—clean, wet, parted, and combed.

“Am I clean enough?” he asked, turning from the full-length mirror after he had been scrubbed and dried and dressed.

“Clean as a whistle,” I assured him.

“Shiny clean,” added my wife):

“Are you going to put me in a taxi and leave me there?”

“No, of course not!” I retort with anger, appalled.

“Now why in the world would we want to do that?”

He responds with a self-effacing shrug. “I don’t know.”

But he does seem to know.

“Are you playing games with me?” I demand. “Or do you really mean that? Do you really think we would leave you in a cab? What would the cabdriver say?”

“Can I ask you?” he requests meekly.

“What?”

“What I want to.”

“I won’t get angry.”

“You’re angry now.”

“I won’t get angrier.”

“Go ahead,” my wife says.

“If you do want to get rid of me, how will you do it?”

“With hugs and kisses,” I answer in exasperation. “You’re ruining the whole day. This is a hell of a conversation to be having with a handsome boy who’s all dressed up in a tattersall shirt, tie, and blazer. And we’re taking you to lunch at a fine restaurant too.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“Yes, you do.”

“You’ll enjoy it.”

“I don’t even want to go to the circus.”

“Yes, you do.”

“You’ll enjoy it.”

I don’t like the subway. (I have had scared terrifying fantasies centered around him in which he does get lost, or has been misplaced, on a subway, but never thoughts or dreams in which I leave him someplace deliberately, or even want to. The door closes between us before we can both get on or off together, separating us. Or we are walking together and I turn my head away for an instant, and when I turn it back, he is gone. Or I forget about him: he slips my mind: and I remember only afterward, when he is no longer present and has disappeared without trace from my dream, that he is supposed to be with me. I am unable to guess where he has gone. There is only void. I feel lonely then, and it is not possible to be certain which one of us has been lost. I feel lost too.)

He withdraws from bad smells (he thinks, perhaps, of rot, poison gas, or suffocation. He does not want to fly to the moon, ever, and neither do I) and is
alarmed by unexpected loud noises (or creeping, mystifying, stealthy ones. So am I, and so, for that matter, are antelopes. He tends to believe that he is the only one who reacts to such things, and that he is the only one who ever feels in danger). He cannot understand why wars, muggings, bees, math, spiders, basketball, rope climbing, nausea, ferocious, menacing men (real and deduced), and public speaking all have to be there for him to contend with, lying in wait for him visibly, stinking, inevitable, unmovable, and unappeasable (and, frankly, neither do I, although there does not seem to be much that I or anyone else can do about it. It is the custom); why he is expected to work harder at math and learn much more and attach more importance to it just because he is good at it, and why his classroom teachers (most of them female), who used to be so delighted with him because of his precocious insight into numbers, are now disappointed with him because he has lost interest in math for math’s sake and why they let him know they are displeased (they feel he has rejected them. He has let them down); or why he must try harder, strive to excel, determine to be better than all other boys in pushball, kickball, throwball, shoveball, dodgeball, baseball, volleyball. (It all does seem indeed like an awful lot of balls for a young little man like him to have to carry around, doesn’t it?) He particularly hates basketball. He does not know what he is supposed to do (and will not let me explain to him. He will ask a specific question and accept only the answer to that question and no more. He cuts me off curtly if I try to go on. He rebuffs me). He is never sure when to shoot and when to pass, and he is too self-conscious and ashamed to confess his predicament and ask. He has never made a basket; he is afraid to try; he never shoots unless people on his team all yell at him: “Shoot! Shoot!” Then he shoots and misses. He is never able to keep straight in his mind when he is supposed to block and obstruct and when he is supposed to catch, pass, cooperate, and shoot. He relies on his instincts, and his instincts are not reliable. In the bewildering disintegration of his judgment, he tends
to lose track of which of the other kids are on his team and which are on the other as the thumping action swarms and slithers around him (like the grasping, unfurling long legs of a large spider, I would imagine. He has never told me this). He passes the ball away to opponents and commits other errors just as conspicuous, and he is pushed and yelled at as a result (and often does not know why. He does not learn from these mistakes because he does not understand what they are. The danger that he may repeat them hobbles his thinking and increases the chances that he will). Forgione shakes his head in disgust. My boy takes it all in. (I imagine all of this too and melt with pity for him.) My boy would like to make baskets and be able to pass and dribble flawlessly. (He doesn’t want to shoot because he knows he will miss.) He is afraid to play basketball and wishes he didn’t have to.